The Call of Duty franchise is known for its annual releases as well as its standard Season Pass DLC model. When purchasing a new title’s season pass, players mostly know that they will get access to about four content drops over the course of the year, with each of these drops consisting mainly of multiplayer and zombie maps along with a few other items. However, if a recently leaked image is true, it seems as if this model will soon change with the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

GamingIntel has leaked an EB Games promotional image for the Black Ops 4 Specialist Edition, which will include the game, a 5” statue, a custom steel case and 1100 in COD points, along with bonus digital items. Notably absent is a season pass, which is usually standard with each Call of Duty title’s collector’s edition. While both Activision and Treyarch have yet to comment on the image, GamingIntel states that exclusive sources have told them that Treyarch is pushing to release a Zombies-only Season Pass.

Unsurprisingly, if such a version of a season pass is released, it will only contain items for the title’s Zombie game mode. Currently, a suggested selling price is also yet to be made known. The shift is said to have come from the drop in active player numbers that every DLC pack brings after release. The change will thus supposedly see Treyarch move towards releasing one or two free multiplayer maps each month instead of including this content in the game’s traditional season pass.

Treyarch has previously hinted at a change in their season pass system with Co-Studio Head Dan Bunting previously saying that the studio was “pushing hard to release content to our fans in a way that’s going to make them happy and a way that we believe is the right thing to do in this stage in our game’s lifespan.” Player fragmentation is a common complaint among popular multiplayer games with DLC schemes, often leading to reduced lifespans of such titles and the above-proposed action should do much to address this problem.

Whether or not this rumor will actually come to fruition, it does seem as if Treyarch is taking significant steps to modernizing the Call of Duty series in Black Ops 4 in an attempt to get the series back to the sales heights it experienced during its prime. Along with the supposed changes to the series’ season pass model, the title will not include a single-player campaign, instead forgoing it to include a new battle royale game mode. Only time will tell whether the game’s community base will be happy with all these new changes.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is set to be released on October 12 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: GamingINTEL