Call of Duty Devs Address Controversial Skins & Want Open Discussion With Fans

The team behind Call of Duty has heard the criticisms fans have regarding cosmetics and skins, but they aren’t promising any big changes just yet. Call of Duty has released every single year without fail for 20 years now, but the post-launch model has changed quite a bit since then. The series used to do roughly four DLCs which would feature new maps and modes for about $20 a pop. However, this would split the player base and cause annoying issues, so the series eventually decided to ditch paid map packs in favor of in-game transactions such as battle passes, bundles, and the incredibly lucrative skins.

While these bundles were accepted at first, they’ve gotten more and more ridiculous as time has gone on. Nicki Minaj, Beavis and Butthead, characters from American Dad, and more have all been added to Call of Duty over the last few years and created frustration among players. Although Call of Duty is far from realistic, it has created a lack of an identity for the franchise, particularly when the story modes try to stay relatively serious and grounded. With that said, it seems the community’s voice has gotten loud enough.

Last month, Battlefield developers noted that they were going to keep Battlefield 6‘s cosmetics grounded and authentic to the gritty shooter they were developing. This was met with an extremely positive reception from fans, though some remain skeptics that EA will inevitably change course. Now, all eyes are on Call of Duty to see if they will also listen to fans and move away from these outlandish skins and crossovers. I recently visited Treyarch to preview Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and it seems like they are interested in at least considering a new approach.

Call of Duty Team Addresses Criticism to Skins and Cosmetics

Director of Communications Stephanie Snowden told press at the studio that they are monitoring feedback with regards to cosmetics in Call of Duty and want to “do right” by the players and are “considering” their feedback for the future. However, they didn’t really offer any kind of definitive stance on the matter at this time. For what it’s worth, Snowden’s comments were unprompted. They weren’t in response to a question asked by a journalist, this was something they wanted to address head on.

“It’s our job on this team to track sentiment, reporting social conversations, so we’re monitoring community conversations all the time, including the discussions about operators and skins,” said Snowden. “When it comes to cosmetics, we have a very wide, broad, whole community that we want to serve with a lot of different interests and tastes especially across different game modes. So we are paying attention to that, but we also need to do right by our players, so this is feedback that we’ve heard and will be considering in the future.”

As of right now, we’re not sure what kinds of skins will be available in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 outside of some in-universe pre-order content. However, it wouldn’t be surprising if we do see some outlandish skins and crossovers for the foreseeable future due to the fact development was already in full swing when Activision started to become more receptive to this feedback. Either way, hopefully this is a genuine statement and Call of Duty will listen to fans for post-launch support and future games.

On the flip side, Treyarch also revealed why they haven’t brought the Pick 10 system back to Call of Duty during my time at the studio, despite fan feedback. Unfortunately for fans, that seems like something that the developer isn’t as willing to budge on regardless of pleas for a return to the beloved system that was introduced in Black Ops 2.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will release on November 14th. What do you think of Call of Duty’s skins? Let me know in the comments.