It looks like a loot box system is planned for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. With a beta now live on PlayStation 4, players have been getting their first good look at the game, and are sharing screengrabs of a ‘common supply drop’, an item classified as a ‘loot box’, in the post-match summary screen.
Multiple users on the Modern Warfare Subreddit, Twitter, and YouTube have posted screenshots and footage of ‘after-action reports’ featuring the supply drop, as you can see below.
There’s no detail on what it contains – whether cosmetic or otherwise – or whether others like it will also available for purchase. This and the fact that there’s space for an image, but none included, suggests that the feature could be incomplete or revealed before developer Infinity Ward intended. One thing seems implied by ‘common’, though – it looks like supply drops will come in different rarities.
YouTuber NerosCinema suggests that players will unlock supply drops as they level up in the game. As he mentions in his video, ‘COD points’ – the series’ longstanding in-game currency – are confirmed to return, with the Enhanced Edition including 3,000 points with the purchase. It’s not yet confirmed if these will tie into acquiring loot boxes or if they can be bought with real money, but given that both these things have been true since Black Ops III, it seems a pretty safe bet.
The discovery of loot boxes is an interesting development, given that a couple of weeks ago a Reddit user asked Infinity Ward about whether microtransactions would feature in the game, to which it responded “please be patient. We hear you. And we’ll share more as we get closer to launch” adding that it would “say more when we’re ready.”
It’s important to bear in mind that the game is in its beta testing stage, and so may not reflect the final build of the game, which is due to launch later this year. There are plenty of unanswered questions, but at the very least it does seem we can expect some form of loot box system to return in Modern Warfare.
We’ve reached out to Activision for confirmation on this, whether loot boxes will be in the game at launch, and whether their contents will be cosmetic-only. We’ll update this story with any new information. The PC and all-platform betas will roll out later this month.