Black Ops Cold War players outraged over PlayStation-exclusive bonuses
Treyarch/PlaystationBlack Ops Cold War will be offering players on PlayStation exclusive content and bonuses, but some of the game’s fans are apparently unhappy with the developers playing favorites.
On November 6, Call of Duty announced the full list of PlayStation-exclusive perks coming with Black Ops. These include two extra create-a-class slots, a special Zombies game mode, two different weapon experience bonuses, and even more.
Once every month, BOCW players on the platform will get a 24hr-long double XP boost. In addition, if your party consists of other PS users, everyone will receive a 25-percent weapon XP increase while you’re grouped together.
As long as you’re on Sony’s platform these seem like a pretty sweet deal, but other players aren’t thrilled with what they’re calling a system where you have to play on Playstation to get the most for your money.
In a highly upvoted post on the Cold War subreddit, user ‘BenjaminWareing’ called the exclusives “blatantly anti-consumer” for players on PC or Xbox.
“Last year, an exclusive game mode was lame enough, but it was not game-changing,” they wrote. “Now granting two extra create-a-class slots ONLY for PlayStation players, AND extra tier skips, AND extra weapon XP, AND EXCLUSIVE Double XP events – ALL ONLY FOR PLAYSTATION is crossing the line.”
Back in 2019, Activision was praised for getting rid of loot boxes in Modern Warfare, replacing them with a battle pass system (that can even be unlocked for free with enough earned COD Points). Now, though, this new console-specific exclusivity is getting a fair share of heat for giving PlayStation users a distinct advantage, since they’re able to level up and unlock things like weapon attachments much quicker.
“This has gone beyond console exclusivity,” another Reddit user replied in the comments. “This is Console advantage.”
TreyarchIt’s far from the first time CoD has played favorites of one platform over the other. In recent years Sony has been the one with an exclusivity deal, but from 2010-2015 it was Microsoft and Xbox users who were the ones getting new content first.
The bonuses in previous titles never included these type of XP boosts or as many extra weapon slots like Cold War players will see though, and, with crossplay now a thing, it’s understandable why people who aren’t playing on PlayStation see it as massively unfair for those who are.
