Call of Duty’s most problematic feature finally gets fixed ahead of Black Ops 6 launch

One of Call of Duty’s main pain points over the past few years will be optimized in a pending update, coming early next week before Black Ops 6’s launch.

The first step in overhauling Call of Duty HQ’s hard-to-navigate user interface begins on Monday when preloads for BO6 go live at 11am CT. The hub of all things CoD that houses multiple titles from the past few years in the series, all the way back to 2019, should operate more smoothly and be less frustrating to navigate. It’s been a main complaint for many players since it was iterated.

Starting with Monday’s download, the UI of the launcher will evolve over time. When launching CoD HQ after the update goes live, a new tab will now feature game tiles (any CoD game you have installed), a featured tile that shows “a variety of top content such as modes, maps, and Battle Passes depending on what is new and most relevant at the time,” a “What’s Hot” row featuring playlists and bundles for easy access, and a “Last Played” tile to hop back into whatever you previously played.

When players update on Monday, MW3 and Warzone will be the primary tiles in the Home tab. Once BO6 launches, it will replace MW3 as the main title, and when season one begins some time in December, it will enter the final phase as it will feature BO6 and Warzone, along with a battle pass tab, and an overhaul to Warzone’s UI that mirrors BO6.

Speaking of Warzone, CoD’s free-to-play battle royale will also be available as its own separate download as part of the UI overhaul. This will obviously be a big help to players who don’t choose to purchase new titles in the series but stick with Warzone, saving up a lot of hard drive space.

Because of this, Warzone won’t be included as part of the default download for BO6, and all facets of every game installed (campaign, Zombies, etc.) can also be installed or uninstalled easily from the UI or your console’s management settings.

I think most players would still prefer separate CoD games to be available as separate apps instead of dealing with CoD HQ. But since Activision is so staunch on its stance of keeping it a thing for a variety of reasons (including ease of updating and optimizing download sizes), this update should hopefully improve the process we’re stuck with.

The update for CoD HQ goes live alongside BO6 preloads on Monday, Oct. 21 at 11am CT. BO6 launches worldwide on Oct. 25 but hits digital shelves at different times depending on region and platform.