Black Ops Cold War could be getting ranked play in the near future.
League Play is one of the most wanted features for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War among the competitive community, and it looks like ranked play is coming to the game in the near future if a recent leak is to be believed. This leak suggests League Play will be coming to the latest Call of Duty title within the next few months, and there’s a high likelihood that it’s real.
Speaking on a YouTube livestream on January 3, notable Call of Duty insider Tom Henderson stated that League Play is planned for Black Ops Cold War and will be added to the game in an upcoming patch. “League Play is scheduled for this quarter, so between now and March,” Henderson explained on the livestream. He then went on to clarify that’s ranked play is unlikely to appear before the end of Black Ops Cold War Season 1, meaning fans will probably have to wait until Season 2 begins before League Play is added to the game. This date lines up with previous ranked release dates, as Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 received ranked play in an update in February 2019 a few months after release.
While the increasing prevalence of skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) in recent Call of Duty titles has made quick play feel like ranked play for some people, competitive players have still been asking for a dedicated competitive mode since Black Ops Cold War was announced. Treyarch tends to cater to the competitive Call of Duty community with its post-launch support, so a ranked mode was all but confirmed when it was announced that it would be behind Call of Duty 2020 instead of Sledgehammer.
However, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare skipping out on competitive play entirely, a fact made even stranger considering the Call of Duty League launched shortly after the game, many fans were worried about the future of ranked play in Call of Duty games. However, Treyarch design director David Vonderhaar confirmed that Black Ops Cold War would feature some sort of League Play in an interview prior to launch, so fans have been waiting for an official announcement since the game released in November. “Do you know a Black Ops game without a hardcore competitive agenda? Can you think of one? I can not,” Vonderhaar stated in the interview. “There’s your answer, without telling you anything.”
Henderson’s livestream also revealed some more interesting information about the future of Call of Duty, including a supposed development timeline that places Sledgehammer Games as the main developer of Call of Duty 2021. Sledgehammer was initially in charge of Call of Duty 2020 before development issues resulted in the studio transferring ownership of the project to Treyarch, who then produced Black Ops Cold War. With Call of Duty traditionally on a three-year cycle that has now been thrown off schedule by the development mixup last year, Sledgehammer is in a unique position if it is truly creating the next Call of Duty title.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
- This article was updated on February 7th, 2022
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