‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’ Blackout’s “Down But Not Out” Game Mode Is Live

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s new limited time mode for Blackout is now live with “Down But Not Out” bringing respawns to the battle royale game for the first time.

First teased by Treyarch in a post which detailed what was to come in Black Ops 4 as part of this week’s updates, the game mode initially didn’t have a release date beyond it coming out some time this week. Treyarch followed up that teaser by officially announcing that the game mode had gone live in Black Ops 4, but only for the PlayStation 4 version first.

The official announcement used some of the same language as the teaser to preview what players can expect from the mode. While it refers to the subsequent drop-ins by squads as a “redeploy,” what that essentially means for players is that teams can be revived in Down But Not Out. This is assuming that one of the squad members is left alive though, but if they are, each shift of the circle that constricts the map will allow the players to respawn.

“Play in squads of up to 4 players,” the in-game description of the mode said. “All players who have an alive teammate will reinsert into the map when the next collapse starts. Players receive a small basic loadout kit upon each reinsertion.”

This essentially means that it doesn’t matter how many times a player or several in a squad die as long as they’ve got someone who can play it safe until the circle closes in. While that might inspire some more defensive and conservative actions from remaining players, on the flip side, it’ll cause people to be more aggressive if they know only one player remains from a squad or else they risk having the whole group redeployed within minutes.

Down But Not Out is an important limited-time mode in Blackout since it’s the first to add a game mode where respawns are enabled. Other battle royale games like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds have implemented similar game modes that allow for respawns instead of a one-elimination match, so it appears the stage has been set for future game modes to offer similar features.

Black Ops 4’s new Blackout game mode is now live on the PlayStation 4 and is expected to come to the Xbox One and PC at a later date.