This year's premium Call of Duty title, Black Ops 7, has officially been rated M for Mature by the ESRB. The mature rating is no surprise for fans of the franchise, which features intense military violence, themes of brainwashing and torture, and ample amounts of blood and gore. The rating and summary were originally reported by CharlieIntel on social media.
What was tucked away inside the ratings summary, however, has been a source of frustration for many in the Call of Duty community.
"Some weapons feature marijuana/joints/paraphernalia: players' character inhaling marijuana from a bong-like structure attached to a rifle; players' character smoking joints or inhaling through bongs as part of execution sequences," the rating summary reads.
Call of Duty has always been cozy with the weed-loving side of its community, embracing trippy marijuana-friendly aesthetics for weapon camos and operator skins. However, in recent years, the developers have cranked that dial up to 420, leading to increased frustration among members of the CoD community who do not want to be inundated with marijuana imagery in multiplayer matches.
While weed-laced weapon camos were easy enough to ignore in the Call of Duty titles of yesteryear, the introduction of operator bundles themed around wacky tobacky was far harder to overlook. Modern Warfare 2 (2022) introduced Dr. Kushlov as an operator bundle, while the stoned Sloth bundle launched in MW3 (2023) — drawing ire from the "No-Inhuman-Operators" crowd and the "Why-is-there-so-much-weed" crowd alike.
That didn't slow down Activision or the Call of Duty team, however. By the time spring rolled around during the Modern Warfare 3 (2023) era, Sledgehammer Games had done its part to usher in more weed-themed content to Call of Duty with its G3T_H1GH and G3T_H1GH3R limited modes.
Thankfully, the modes were fairly self-contained and only affected players who chose to engage with the limited playlists while they were live, up until a G3T_H1GH map was introduced to small map moshpit playlists.
Modern Warfare 3 also featured a Cheech and Chong Operator Bundle, complete with a kill animation that turned eliminated player characters into burnt blunts that littered the battlefield.
This was a turning point in the drug-themed content, where an effect was no longer specifically meant for the player who purchased the bundle. Rather, the rolled blunt elimination animation was thrust onto players, whether they were interested in engaging with that aspect of Call of Duty or not.
Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 benefited from a feature known as Carry Forward — a policy that allowed operator bundles and weapon skins to transfer between the two titles, bridged by Call of Duty: Warzone — Treyarch Studios decided to forgo Carry Forward with the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
According to the team, the decision not to carry forward purchased bundles was to allow the Black Ops team to tell the story they wanted to tell. The team insisted it wanted to focus on characters related to the Black Ops franchise without overlap from the Modern Warfare series.
The fans were surprisingly receptive to the lack of Carry Forward, breathing a sigh of relief that Black Ops 6 would not be overrun with outlandish operator bundles and weapon effects. Despite promises to maintain the "integrity" of Black Ops, it didn't take long for the game's 90s-themed aesthetic to give way to egregious (and modern) weed-themed content.
By Spring, Treyarch had gone all-in on a weed-themed "Blaze of Glory" event, which underwent a few different iterations and delays due to troubles tied to the season's update rollout. When it did launch, players had the option to dive into a remake of the Black Ops series' most popular map, Nuketown, and a $10 event pass featuring a Seth Rogen operator bundle.
The ESRB's rating summary list of drug paraphernalia in Call of Duty could actually harken to the game's inclusion within the Call of Duty launcher — meaning the rating also covered content from MW2, MW3, and Black Ops 6, and that there is no new weed content included at launch for Black Ops 7.
It could also indicate that Treyarch will revive the Carry Forward policy for Black Ops 7, and that the weed content from Black Ops 6 will be available to multiplayer fans in Black Ops 7 at launch. Either way, I'm assuming my request for a way to ignore the weed content in my list of 7 things that Treyarch should change in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has been denied.
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