Call of Duty Blackout is Currently Free to Play Until January 24

Ron Perillo / 5 years ago

Battle Royale, Call of Duty Style

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s battle royale mode “Blackout” is currently running a free to play promotion. The event is open starting January 17th at 6PM GMT and will last until January 24th.

Normally Blackout is only available through the full £50 Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 multiplayer game. This version also comes with a co-op Zombie mode. However, there is also a cheaper £35 “Battle Edition” version available which only has the multiplayer and Blackout mode.

Just like other battle royale games, Blackout mode lets up to 100 CoD players fight on a single map until only one remains.

Either way, a free week to try out Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Blackout is not a bad way to start the weekend.

Why is Activision Running This Promotion?

The most obvious reason is to increase the player count. Blizzard‘s Overwatch has been getting good results with their free week promotion for years. So it is understandable that Activision would follow suit.

There are also rumours that Activision is considering launching Blackout as a stand-alone free-to-play mode permanently. While this sounds like it takes money out of their pockets, the success of Fortnite shows that there is a lot more money with in-game transactions. In fact, EPIC Games made $3 billion in 2018 alone.

It will also allow them to compete better with other games with battle royale mode like PUBG and CS:Go.