Call of Duty’s bloated HQ launcher — now officially 'decoupled' by Activision — here's what you need to know

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022) and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023) are now available on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC as standalone downloads after having officially been separated from the Call of Duty HQ launcher.

The two legacy COD titles can now be downloaded without having the COD HQ launcher installed. However, legacy content from MW2 and MW3 will still be available in Call of Duty: Warzone. Legacy content within the COD HQ launcher will be removed with the start of Season 5 on August 7.

On Xbox, the decoupling move also means the new standalone versions of both MW2 (2022) and MW3 (2023) have brand-new achievement lists for players to unlock. Completionists can rejoice that they will no longer need to complete four years' worth of Call of Duty titles to earn all the achievements in any one mainline game.

Both titles maintain their original achievement lists, with one exception: Modern Warfare 3 (2023) received a new achievement for reaching Level 55 in multiplayer. The achievement automatically unlocks for players who had already achieved the milestone prior to the game's separation from COD HQ.

The move to separate the games from Call of Duty: Warzone and the COD HQ launcher has been widely celebrated by the community.

The evolution of the COD HQ launcher

Activision and the leading development teams for Call of Duty — including Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Treyarch Studios — have struggled to capitalize on the success of tie-ins between mainline premium titles and the integration of those releases with the free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone battle royale experience.

The introduction of the COD HQ launcher in 2022 alongside Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was intended to create a hub where players could access both Warzone and Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer without requiring them to break up partied teams or relaunch different games.

The Call of Duty HQ launcher was designed to house everything in the COD universe in one place. However, it quickly earned the disdain of players who found it took too long to launch into their preferred Call of Duty experience.

With the launch of Black Ops 6, Treyarch Studios (along with the supporting Call of Duty teams) set out to refresh the COD HQ launcher in what the development team had dubbed a "Time to Fun" initiative.

"We are working on that whole process to try to get it cleaner," said Treyarch director of production Yale Miller in an interview at COD Next 2024, where he described the Call of Duty experience revival as a journey, "… It's about moving things in the ecosystem around and having it as a place where we can load all the games out of it."

The initiative kicked off with a significant reduction in file size for the COD HQ launcher, which had ballooned to over 300GB by the time Black Ops 6 launched — if you had all the titles and their DLC content installed, anyway.

The install size was only one problem the maligned COD HQ launcher faced, however. Its infinitely side-scrolling UI was also the bane of players. While there was some reprieve from the scrolling tiles with the launch of Black Ops 6, it was still a UI choice that showed up in seemingly random parts of the game.

If you wanted to add a camo to your weapon, for example, you would be scrolling right for an undetermined amount of time just to realize you didn't like any of them anyway.

That said, more UI changes have continued to roll out following the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, including changes to Warzone's buy station UI.

Preparing for Black Ops 7

With Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 expected for a Fall or Holiday 2025 release window, the Call of Duty team seems to be taking feedback for the COD HQ launcher to heart.

The community has long requested that premium titles for the Call of Duty franchise be decoupled from the COD launcher to help streamline the process of launching into those games' campaigns and multiplayer experiences. It was even among my own wishlist of 7 things I want to see changed for Black Ops 7.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is the first Call of Duty title to be included with Xbox's Play Anywhere program, meaning players who purchase the game on Xbox consoles benefit from dual entitlements and can play the game on PC at no extra cost.

The Play Anywhere promise may have been a driving force for why the legacy titles were decoupled from the COD HQ, as offering the games as DLC likely complicated the process.