Call of Duty Is Trying to Undercut Battlefield 6’s Release in a Sneaky Way

October 8, 2025, 12:27pm

Call of Duty is trying to subtly ruin the launch of Battlefield 6 with a sneaky new maneuver. Since a new Call of Duty game and a new Battlefield game are set to launch this Fall, many are eagerly awaiting to see how the two first-person shooter juggernauts end up matching up with one another in terms of sales this time around. And while Battlefield 6 will be the first game to hit the market in advance of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Activision is already trying to undercut BF6 just a bit.

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As of this week, Activision announced that it would be making its most recent Call of Duty installment, Black Ops 6, completely free-to-play for a limited time. This promotion is set to begin tomorrow, October 9th, and will run for a full week until October 16th. Not only will the Multiplayer and Zombies game modes be free during this span, but the Campaign will surprisingly be included as well.

Of course, the timing of this Black Ops 6 promo is surely no accident, as Activision has lined it up almost exactly with the arrival of Battlefield 6. Set to release on Friday, October 10th, the latest Battlefield game has been gaining a lot of steam in recent months, primarily thanks to the positive reception from its beta phases. It seems poised to be one of the biggest games in the final months of 2025, which is something that Activision likely doesn’t want to happen, as it could impact the sales for Black Ops 7. As such, it’s trying to entice many to play Black Ops 6 over the next week rather than dive into Battlefield 6 immediately.

Will This Impact Battlefield 6’s Release?

So, will this strategy from Activision to derail Battlefield 6’s release work? In all likelihood, the answer is no. While it’s a great attempt to halt the momentum that BF6 has, many who have been planning to pick up the new Battlefield game this week likely made up their mind weeks or months ago that they would be jumping in at launch. Black Ops 6 is also roughly a year old at this point which means that even if it is now free, a lot of people have likely already played it.

More than anything, though, it’s nice to see that Call of Duty and Battlefield are once again going toe-to-toe with one another. This is likely the first time since 2018 when Battlefield V and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 released near one another that the two franchises were vying to be the Fall’s biggest shooter. Both franchises went at one another again in 2021 with Battlefield 2042 and Call of Duty: Vanguard, but the reception to BF2042 was so poor out of the gate that Vanguard ended up beating it out easily. Perhaps this time around, Battlefield 6 will end up coming out on top and will reach a higher peak than Black Ops 7.

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