Meta is reportedly set to invest $15 billion to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI, in a deal that would make Scale CEO Alexandr Wang head of the tech giant’s new AI unit dedicated to pursuing “superintelligence.”Scale AI, founded in 2016, is a leading data annotation firm that hires workers around the world to label or create the data that is used to train AI systems.The deal is expected to greatly enrich Wang and many of his colleagues with equity in Scale AI; Wang, already a billionaire, would see his wealth grow even further. For Meta, it would breathe new life into the company’s flagging attempts to compete at the “frontier” of AI against OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.However, Scale’s contract workers, many of whom earn just dollars per day via a subsidiary called RemoTasks, are unlikely to benefit at all from the deal, according to sociologists who study the sector. Typically data workers are not formally employed, and are instead paid for the tasks they complete. Those tasks can include labeling the contents of images, answering questions, or rating which of two chatbots’ answers are better, in order to teach AI systems to better comply with human preferences.(TIME has a content partnership with Scale AI.)“I expect few if any Scale annotators will see any upside at all,” says Callum Cant, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex, U.K., who studies gig work platforms. “It would be very surprising to see some kind of feed-through. Most of these people don’t have a stake in ownership of the company.”Many of those workers already suffer from low pay and poor working conditions. In a recent report by Oxford University’s Internet Institute, the Scale subsidiary RemoTasks failed to meet basic standards for fair pay, fair contracts, fair management, and fair worker representation.Advertisement“A key part of Scale’s value lies in its data work services performed by hundreds of thousands of underpaid and poorly protected workers,” says Jonas Valente, an Oxford researcher who worked on the report. “The company remains far from safeguarding basic standards of fair work, despite limited efforts to improve its practices.”The Meta deal is unlikely to change that. “Unfortunately, the increasing profits of many digital labor platforms and their primary companies, such as the case of Scale, do not translate into better conditions for [workers],” Valente says.A Scale AI spokesperson declined to comment for this story. “We're proud of the flexible earning opportunities offered through our platforms,” the company said in a statement to TechCrunch in May. Meta’s investment also calls into question whether Scale AI will continue supplying data to OpenAI and Google, two of its major clients. In the increasingly competitive AI landscape, observers say Meta may see value in cutting off its rivals from annotated data — an essential means of making AI systems smarter. Advertisement“By buying up access to Scale AI, could Meta deny access to that platform and that avenue for data annotation by other competitors?” says Cant. “It depends entirely on Meta’s strategy.”If that were to happen, Cant says, it could put downward pressure on the wages and tasks available to workers, many of whom already struggle to make ends meet with data work.A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on this story.

On June 5, after years of rumors and anticipation, Nintendo will finally launch the Nintendo Switch 2 worldwide. Preorders are already mostly sold out with millions of gamers anxiously awaiting Mario Kart World Tour and new on-the-go ports of Street Fighter 6 and Cyberpunk 2077. Of course Nintendo is no stranger to the hardware business, launching more than a dozen consoles and portables since the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). And there have been many ups and downs over the last four decades. When considering which Nintendo system actually had the best launch, we looked at the quality and quantity of games at release, price, as well as the overall impressiveness of the hardware at launch. This retrospective also considers only the North American launches of each system. With that in mind, this is the definitive ranking of all of Nintendo’s console and portable launches since the NES gave the world a red-capped Italian plumber!  13. Virtual Boy Since entering the video game market in the 1970s, Nintendo has rarely encountered a massive failure, but it’s hard to see the Virtual Boy as anything but a colossal misstep, albeit an ambitious one. A home VR system in the mid-‘90s was literally decades ahead of its time, but nothing about it was really consumer friendly. Despite being marketed as a Game Boy successor, the Virtual Boy wasn’t really portable, and at home, it required a table to play. And while the black and white monochrome screen was fine for the original Game Boy, the Virtual Boy’s red and black monochrome display was known to just cause headaches. As for the launch games, they were aggressively… okay? Mario’s Tennis is a perfectly competent, if barebones, tennis game. Meanwhile Teleroboxer was an interesting, just not terribly compelling Punch-Out!! successor. But even if the games were decent, the controller, a god-awful monstrosity mixing the worst aspects of the SNES and N64 controllers, didn’t do these titles any favors. The launch price, equivalent to around $370 USD in 2025 dollars, was the final nail in the Virtual Boy’s coffin, and Nintendo quietly discontinued the console a year after release. 12. Wii U The Wii U is Nintendo’s worst selling console by a large margin, and the problems really were evident from the beginning. The tablet controller was an interesting idea but just not as engaging or innovative as the Wii’s motion controls. Nintendo really banked on Nintendo Land showcasing what the system could do and banked on it being their next Wii Sports, but it ended up just showing how limited the new console really was. And while Mario games have historically been system sellers, New Super Mario Bros. U was largely a rehash of its Wii predecessor, just with HD graphics. It’s a fine platformer, but a surprisingly average Mario game. Beyond that, the launch lineup was largely made up of third party ports, some of which had been available on other consoles for years at that point. It’s easy to see why so many people were confused about whether the Wii U was a new console or an upgrade of the Wii, and why so many of those who understood what it was ended up skipping it, even if the $300 launch price was competitive. 11. Game Boy Color If we were looking at the entire history of Nintendo consoles, the Game Boy Color would certainly rank higher, but Nintendo just didn’t put much effort into its launch, likely because Nintendo absolutely dominated the handheld gaming market at the time. They didn’t have to work very hard to sell this thing. They knew the players would show up. The highlight of the Game Boy Color’s launch in 1998 was Game & Watch Gallery 2, a color collection of the old handheld titles Nintendo made in the ‘80s. It actually was a very good showcase of the GBC’s better color graphics, but it wasn’t the type of game that had much staying power. The other launch titles, Pocket Bomberman, Centipede, and Tetris DX, a colorized version of the original Game Boy’s Tetris launch title, were similarly serviceable but largely forgettable, because seriously, who was dying to play a colorized version of Game Boy Tetris at that point? But at $79.95, the launch price was right, and the GBC quickly built an impressive library of exclusives. 10. Nintendo 3DS When the 3DS was first revealed in 2010, its glasses-free stereoscopic 3D generated an immense amount of buzz. Sadly, a botched launch promptly killed a lot of that momentum. Nintendo’s first party offerings were all oddly disappointing. Pilotwings had been a solid launch series in the past, but Pilotwings Resort lacked a lot of content compared to its predecessors. Steel Diver was an interesting submarine sim that just didn’t quite click. And Nintendogs + Cats, well… it was more Nintendogs for whatever that’s worth. The launch lineup wasn’t all disappointments, however. Street Fighter IV 3D Edition and Rayman 3D were excellent ports of console games, and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars remains an underrated gem of a tactics game. But arguably the biggest knock against the 3DS was its price. The handheld launched at $250, a price that many gamers balked at. Nintendo was forced to cut the price to $170 just a few months later. Early adopters were compensated with a collection of 20 NES and GBA games, but so many unnecessary missteps left a bad taste in the mouths of many Nintendo fans, and it seems like the 3DS never quite reached its full potential. 9. Nintendo 64 I remember first playing Super Mario 64 in a Toys ‘R Us in 1996 before the U.S. launch and being absolutely blown away. I had never used an analog controller before that let me control how fast or slow my character on screen moved. There had been plenty of 3D platformers prior to that point, but Mario’s first 3D outing truly felt like a giant leap forward for gaming thanks to its silky smooth controls and innovative open world gameplay. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! The problem with N64’s launch is that there just wasn’t much else to it. It only launched in the U.S. with Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, which was another excellent showcase for what the console could do, but once you played through those games, new releases were sparse, and expensive, an issue that would continue to plague the console for its entire lifespan. The N64 certainly had quality games, it just could never get much quantity. And while the $250 launch price was reasonable, it was only $50 cheaper than a PlayStation at the time, and given that the PS1 had a much larger library, and its games tended to be cheaper, it’s easy to see why Sony’s console outsold Nintendo’s by a large margin in the late ‘90s. 8. Nintendo DS Nintendo didn’t really seem to know what the DS was supposed to be at first. Seemingly rushed to market in late 2004 to get ahead of the imminent Sony PSP launch, the DS was initially marketed as a “third pillar” system that would sit on shelves alongside the GameCube and Game Boy Advance, though it quickly elbowed the GBA out of the handheld space.  That wasn’t exactly thanks to a great launch lineup though. Super Mario 64 DSFeel the Magic: XY/XX was a weird and wonderful minigame showcase of the handheld’s new features, but it had little mass market appeal. And while games like Madden NFL 2005, Spider-Man 2, and Urbz: Sims in the City were all perfectly serviceable, none of them were on par with their console counterparts. But at $150, the DS was $100 cheaper than the PSP, and that easily helped it become a bestseller.  7. Nintendo Switch  In 2025 the Switch is an undisputed massive success, but its launch in 2017 was very much a mixed bag. First the good: the hardware, though underpowered compared to competitors, is fantastic. Being able to seamlessly switch between playing games on a TV and on the go is a wonderful innovation. The Switch feels great in your hands, and the Joy-Cons still offer some of the best feedback of any controller on the market. It was clear that the system had massive potential from the start, and the $300 launch price undercut both Sony and Microsoft. But the launch lineup was the definition of a one trick pony. Yes, The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild was an instant classic and absolutely deserves to be in the conversation of the greatest games of all time. But beyond that, how many people even remember the Switch’s other launch games? 1-2 Switch is a lame minigame collection. Super Bomberman R had potential as a launch exclusive, but turned out to be a middling entry in the long running franchise. And ports of Just Dance 2017 and Skylanders: Imaginators weren’t exactly moving systems. Still, the success of the Nintendo Switch makes a really good case that all a console needs to be successful is a great design and one killer app. 6. Game Boy When it launched in 1989, the Game Boy was woefully underpowered and lacked the color screen of competitors like the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx. It didn’t really matter though. First Nintendo understood that less power meant longer battery life, which is still about the most important feature for portable gaming. More importantly, the Game Boy had a secret weapon: Tetris.  The classic puzzler was a pack-in title for the Game Boy at launch, the equivalent of giving the first hit away for free to get gamers hooked. At $89.99, the launch bundle was an absolute steal. Along with Tetris, Super Mario Land was a quirky and unique take on the Mario series that was well worth checking out, while ports of Tennis and Baseball from the NES library kept people hooked as the Game Boy gained momentum.  5. GameCube The GameCube launch is both better and worse than you remember it. While the console was kind of knocked for not having any truly great exclusives at launch, the exclusives that were released have actually aged rather well. This was a system where you could pick up Luigi’s Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, and Super Monkey Ball at launch, all fantastic titles that weren’t available anywhere else. And while it launched three days after the original Xbox, it was also $100 cheaper. Admittedly, the third-party offerings were a bit slim, but Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3Crazy Taxi with the all important arcade soundtrack that’d been missing from more recent releases. But those ports also showed off the GameCube’s biggest weakness: there was really nothing different about these versions if you already owned them elsewhere. It’s not surprising then that after this generation, Nintendo started looking toward new gimmicks to sell consoles instead of just pushing graphics technology to its limits. 4. SNES The SNES didn’t launch with a ton of games, but there wasn’t a stinker in the bunch. Of course there was Super Mario World, still arguably the best Mario game ever made. Not only is the design of that game timeless, but the huge graphical upgrade over anything the NES could do quickly justified the upgrade to a new console. Pilotwings and F-Zero, with their revolutionary use of Mode 7 further showed off the power of the system. The $199 launch price (equivalent to around $460 today) was high for the time, but the launch lineup was so good, the price was kind of justified. Even the two games pulling up the rear, Gradius III and an SNES-exclusive version of SimCity were excellent titles worth picking up. But what’s really underrated about the SNES is how much of an improvement the controller was. It was much more ergonomic than the hard rectangle shape of the NES controller, and the addition of X and Y and shoulder buttons made it clear from the get-go that this console was going to open up a lot of new gameplay styles. 3. Game Boy Advance The Game Boy Advance had an all too brief time as Nintendo’s premiere handheld before the DS took the spotlight, but it built an impressive library during its time starting with the launch. The $100 launch price is quite possibly the best of any piece of Nintendo hardware. And the portable had a solid one, two punch out of the gate with F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, an excellent successor to the SNES title, and Super Mario Advance, a full-fledged remake of Super Mario Bros. 2 that remains the best way to experience this classic.  The 15 other titles available at launch included solid ports of games like Rayman and ChuChuRocket!, with the portability of the GBA version arguably making it more preferable to play than its bigger brother on Dreamcast. But for many, the real star of the launch was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, a technically impressive port that somehow managed to squeeze all of the gameplay of the console version into an isometric view. Before release, many were touting that the GBA was the equivalent of a handheld SNES. These early games showed that it could actually be even better than that. 2. NES By the mid-1980s, console gaming was essentially dead in North America. Atari had killed the market, flooding it with low quality games. It would take an impressive new console, genius marketing, and just a little bit of luck to bring home gaming back from the brink. The NES succeeded at a tough time for video games by trying not to be just another console. It was more of a toy, or “entertainment system,” sold alongside a Zapper light gun and R.O.B., a robot accessory. Gimmicky? Sure, but that was just the opening salvo in Nintendo’s strategy, the Trojan horse to bring consoles back into the living room. Of course, the games needed to be good for the NES to succeed, and Nintendo had that down pat, launching with 17 titles, including Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, Duck Hunt, and Ice Climbers, titles that are iconic to this day. Other titles like Baseball, Tennis, and Pinball were more perfunctory, but good enough to gain the public’s attention and prove that video games weren’t just a fad. Admittedly, the $200 launch price (equivalent to nearly $600 in today’s dollars) was high, though historically similar to many other launch prices for new consoles, and that price point clearly didn’t do much to dissuade prospective buyers. 1. Wii  Twenty years after the NES brought consoles back from the brink, Nintendo’s home console business found itself in a tough spot. Despite good reviews and a respectable library of games, the GameCube had just taken third place in a three-way fight. Clearly, just trying to build the most powerful console wasn’t the key to success. So as Sony and Microsoft turned to HD gaming, Nintendo released a console just slightly more powerful than its predecessor, but with the benefit of motion controls thanks to the Wii-mote. It sounded kinda nuts. Then people played Wii Sports and were immediately hooked. The game was a phenomenon. Not just hardcore gamers wanted to play it, but parents, and even grandparents. The Wii truly brought console gaming to the masses in a way that had previously been unthinkable thanks to an innovative new controller. Oh, and for the hardcore gamers, a little title by the name of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight PrincessExcite TruckTrauma Center: Second Opinion were more than enough to keep the console flying off shelves for years after release, especially because the older technology meant it could be sold substantially cheaper than either the Xbox 360 or the PS3.

Black Ops 6 season 4 is about Grief. No, not the all too real human emotion (this is still Call of Duty after all); the new game mode! In addition to Grief — a competitive survival mode for Zombies that hasn’t been playable since Black Ops 2 — season 4 of Black Ops 6 will also introduce its usual seasonal slew of new maps, modes, and weapons. The season will also feature a collaboration with Ballerina, the forthcoming John Wick tie-in film, both through a limited time-event and shop bundle. Here’s when Black Ops 6 season 4 releases in your time zone, plus a few more details about what you can expect from the season. Black Ops 6 season 3 release time in your time zone Black Ops 6 season 4 releases at 12 p.m. EDT on Thursday, May 29, on all platforms. Here’s when that is in your time zone: 9 a.m. PDT for the West Coast of North America 12 p.m. EDT for the East Coast of North America 5 p.m. BST for the U.K. 6 p.m. CEST for Western Europe/Paris 1 a.m. JST on Friday, May 30, for Japan What to expect from Black Ops 6 season 4 Beyond the reintroduction of Zombies’ Grief mode, other big ticket changes coming in Black Ops 6 season 4 include the following: At launch, expect two new weapons: the LC10 SMG and the FFAR 1 assault rifle. New maps at launch include Shutdown and Fugitive (both Core maps), plus Blitz (a Strike map). Partway through the season, Eclipse will be added as a Strike map while a remaster of Black Ops 3’s Fringe will be added as a Core map. Two new modes are coming in Black Ops 6 season 4. Team Elimination, available at launch, is a deathmatch-type mode in which two teams whittle away a pool of lives for the opposing team. Partway through the season, One in the Chamber — a free-for-all mode where each player starts with one bullet and can only get more ammo by scoring kills — comes back. The Ballerina event will run from June 5 to June 12 and feature a 10-reward track, including the Essex Model 07 marksman rifle. For more granular details about what to expect from Black Ops 6 season 4, here’s the Activision blog post about the season.

Essex Police has not properly considered the potentially discriminatory impacts of its live facial recognition (LFR) use, according to documents obtained by Big Brother Watch and shared with Computer Weekly. While the force claims in an equality impact assessment (EIA) that “Essex Police has carefully considered issues regarding bias and algorithmic injustice”, privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch said the document – obtained under Freedom of Information (FoI) rules – shows it has likely failed to fulfil its public sector equality duty (PSED) to consider how its policies and practices could be discriminatory. The campaigners highlighted how the force is relying on false comparisons to other algorithms and “parroting misleading claims” from the supplier about the LFR system’s lack of bias. For example, Essex Police said that when deploying LFR, it will set the system threshold “at 0.6 or above, as this is the level whereby equitability of the rate of false positive identification across all demographics is achieved”. However, this figure is based on the National Physical Laboratory’s (NPL) testing of NEC’s Neoface V4 LFR algorithm deployed by the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police, which Essex Police does not use. Instead, Essex Police has opted to use an algorithm developed by Israeli biometrics firm Corsight, whose chief privacy officer, Tony Porter, was formerly the UK’s surveillance camera commissioner until January 2021. Highlighting testing of the Corsight_003 algorithm conducted in June 2022 by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the EIA also claims it has “a bias differential FMR [False Match Rate] of 0.0006 overall, the lowest of any tested within NIST at the time of writing, according to the supplier”. However, looking at the NIST website, where all of the testing data is publicly shared, there is no information to support the figure cited by Corsight, or its claim to essentially have the least biased algorithm available. A separate FoI response to Big Brother Watch confirmed that, as of 16 January 2025, Essex Police had not conducted any “formal or detailed” testing of the system itself, or otherwise commissioned a third party to do so. Essex Police's lax approach to assessing the dangers of a controversial and dangerous new form of surveillance has put the rights of thousands at risk Jake Hurfurt, Big Brother Watch “Looking at Essex Police’s EIA, we are concerned about the force’s compliance with its duties under equality law, as the reliance on shaky evidence seriously undermines the force’s claims about how the public will be protected against algorithmic bias,” said Jake Hurfurt, head of research and investigations at Big Brother Watch. “Essex Police’s lax approach to assessing the dangers of a controversial and dangerous new form of surveillance has put the rights of thousands at risk. This slapdash scrutiny of their intrusive facial recognition system sets a worrying precedent. “Facial recognition is notorious for misidentifying women and people of colour, and Essex Police’s willingness to deploy the technology without testing it themselves raises serious questions about the force’s compliance with equalities law. Essex Police should immediately stop their use of facial recognition surveillance.” The need for UK police forces deploying facial recognition to consider how their use of the technology could be discriminatory was highlighted by a legal challenge brought against South Wales Police by Cardiff resident Ed Bridges. In August 2020, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the use of LFR by the force was unlawful because the privacy violations it entailed were “not in accordance” with legally permissible restrictions on Bridges’ Article 8 privacy rights; it did not conduct an appropriate data protection impact assessment (DPIA); and it did not comply with its PSED to consider how its policies and practices could be discriminatory. The judgment specifically found that the PSED is a “duty of process and not outcome”, and requires public bodies to take reasonable steps “to make enquiries about what may not yet be known to a public authority about the potential impact of a proposed decision or policy on people with the relevant characteristics, in particular for present purposes race and sex”. Big Brother Watch said equality assessments must rely on “sufficient quality evidence” to back up the claims being made and ultimately satisfy the PSED, but that the documents obtained do not demonstrate the force has had “due regard” for equalities. Academic Karen Yeung, an interdisciplinary professor at Birmingham Law School and School of Computer Science, told Computer Weekly that, in her view, the EIA is “clearly inadequate”. She also criticised the document for being “incoherent”, failing to look at the systemic equalities impacts of the technology, and relying exclusively on testing of entirely different software algorithms used by other police forces trained on different populations: “This does not, in my view, fulfil the requirements of the public sector equality duty. It is a document produced from a cut-and-paste exercise from the largely irrelevant material produced by others.” Computer Weekly contacted Essex Police about every aspect of the story. “We take our responsibility to meet our public sector equality duty very seriously, and there is a contractual requirement on our LFR partner to ensure sufficient testing has taken place to ensure the software meets the specification and performance outlined in the tender process,” said a spokesperson. “There have been more than 50 deployments of our LFR vans, scanning 1.7 million faces, which have led to more than 200 positive alerts, and nearly 70 arrests. “To date, there has been one false positive, which, when reviewed, was established to be as a result of a low-quality photo uploaded onto the watchlist and not the result of bias issues with the technology. This did not lead to an arrest or any other unlawful action because of the procedures in place to verify all alerts. This issue has been resolved to ensure it does not occur again.” The spokesperson added that the force is also committed to carrying out further assessment of the software and algorithms, with the evaluation of deployments and results being subject to an independent academic review. “As part of this, we have carried out, and continue to do so, testing and evaluation activity in conjunction with the University of Cambridge. The NPL have recently agreed to carry out further independent testing, which will take place over the summer. The company have also achieved an ISO 42001 certification,” said the spokesperson. “We are also liaising with other technical specialists regarding further testing and evaluation activity.” However, the force did not comment on why it was relying on the testing of a completely different algorithm in its EIA, or why it had not conducted or otherwise commissioned its own testing before operationally deploying the technology in the field. Computer Weekly followed up Essex Police for clarification on when the testing with Cambridge began, as this is not mentioned in the EIA, but received no response by time of publication. Although Essex Police and Corsight claim the facial recognition algorithm in use has “a bias differential FMR of 0.0006 overall, the lowest of any tested within NIST at the time of writing”, there is no publicly available data on NIST’s website to support this claim. Drilling down into the demographic split of false positive rates shows, for example, that there is a factor of 100 more false positives in West African women than for Eastern European men. While this is an improvement on the previous two algorithms submitted for testing by Corsight, other publicly available data held by NIST undermines Essex Police’s claim in the EIA that the “algorithm is identified by NIST as having the lowest bias variance between demographics”. Looking at another metric held by NIST – FMR Max/Min, which refers to the ratio between demographic groups that give the most and least false positives – it essentially represents how inequitable the error rates are across different age groups, sexes and ethnicities. In this instance, smaller values represent better performance, with the ratio being an estimate of how many times more false positives can be expected in one group over another. According to the NIST webpage for “demographic effects” in facial recognition algorithms, the Corsight algorithm has an FMR Max/Min of 113(22), meaning there are at least 21 algorithms that display less bias. For comparison, the least biased algorithm according to NIST results belongs to a firm called Idemia, which has an FMR Max/Min of 5(1). However, like Corsight, the highest false match rate for Idemia’s algorithm was for older West African women. Computer Weekly understands this is a common problem with many of the facial recognition algorithms NIST tests because this group is not typically well-represented in the underlying training data of most firms. Computer Weekly also confirmed with NIST that the FMR metric cited by Corsight relates to one-to-one verification, rather than the one-to-many situation police forces would be using it in. This is a key distinction, because if 1,000 people are enrolled in a facial recognition system that was built on one-to-one verification, then the false positive rate will be 1,000 times larger than the metrics held by NIST for FMR testing. “If a developer implements 1:N (one-to-many) search as N 1:1 comparisons, then the likelihood of a false positive from a search is expected to be proportional to the false match for the 1:1 comparison algorithm,” said NIST scientist Patrick Grother. “Some developers do not implement 1:N search that way.” Commenting on the contrast between this testing methodology and the practical scenarios the tech will be deployed in, Birmingham Law School’s Yeung said one-to-one is for use in stable environments to provide admission to spaces with limited access, such as airport passport gates, where only one person’s biometric data is scrutinised at a time. “One-to-many is entirely different – it’s an entirely different process, an entirely different technical challenge, and therefore cannot typically achieve equivalent levels of accuracy,” she said. Computer Weekly contacted Corsight about every aspect of the story related to its algorithmic testing, including where the “0.0006” figure is drawn from and its various claims to have the “least biased” algorithm. “The facts presented in your article are partial, manipulated and misleading,” said a company spokesperson. “Corsight AI’s algorithms have been tested by numerous entities, including NIST, and have been proven to be the least biased in the industry in terms of gender and ethnicity. This is a major factor for our commercial and government clients.” However, Corsight was either unable or unwilling to specify which facts are “partial, manipulated or misleading” in response to Computer Weekly’s request for clarification. Computer Weekly also contacted Corsight about whether it has done any further testing by running N one-to-one comparisons, and whether it has changed the system’s threshold settings for detecting a match to suppress the false positive rate, but received no response on these points. While most facial recognition developers submit their algorithms to NIST for testing on an annual or bi-annual basis, Corsight last submitted an algorithm in mid-2022. Computer Weekly contacted Corsight about why this was the case, given that most algorithms in NIST testing show continuous improvement with each submission, but again received no response on this point. The Essex Police EIA also highlights testing of the Corsight algorithm conducted in 2022 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claiming it demonstrated “Corsight’s capability to perform equally across all demographics”. However, Big Brother Watch’s Hurfurt highlighted that the DHS study focused on bias in the context of true positives, and did not assess the algorithm for inequality in false positives. This is a key distinction for the testing of LFR systems, as false negatives where the system fails to recognise someone will likely not lead to incorrect stops or other adverse effects, whereas a false positive where the system confuses two people could have more severe consequences for an individual. The DHS itself also publicly came out against Corsight’s representation of the test results, after the firm claimed in subsequent marketing materials that “no matter how you look at it, Corsight is ranked #1. #1 in overall recognition, #1 in dark skin, #1 in Asian, #1 in female”. Speaking with IVPM in August 2023, DHS said: “We do not know what this claim, being ‘#1’ is referring to.” The department added that the rules of the testing required companies to get their claims cleared through DHS to ensure they do not misrepresent their performance. In its breakdown of the test results, IVPM noted that systems of multiple other manufacturers achieved similar results to Corsight. The company did not respond to a request for comment about the DHS testing. Computer Weekly contacted Essex Police about all the issues raised around Corsight testing, but received no direct response to these points from the force. While Essex Police claimed in its EIA that it “also sought advice from their own independent Data and Digital Ethics Committee in relation to their use of LFR generally”, meeting minutes obtained via FoI rules show that key impacts had not been considered. For example, when one panel member questioned how LFR deployments could affect community events or protests, and how the force could avoid the technology having a “chilling presence”, the officer present (whose name has been redacted from the document) said “that’s a pretty good point, actually”, adding that he had “made a note” to consider this going forward. The EIA itself also makes no mention of community events or protests, and does not specify how different groups could be affected by these different deployment scenarios. Elsewhere in the EIA, Essex Police claims that the system is likely to have minimal impact across age, gender and race, citing the 0.6 threshold setting, as well as NIST and DHS testing, as ways of achieving “equitability” across different demographics. Again, this threshold setting relates to a completely different system used by the Met and South Wales Police. For each protected characteristic, the EIA has a section on “mitigating” actions that can be taken to reduce adverse impacts. While the “ethnicity” section again highlights the National Physical Laboratory’s testing of a completely different algorithm, most other sections note that “any watchlist created will be done so as close to the deployment as possible, therefore hoping to ensure the most accurate and up-to-date images of persons being added are uploaded”. However, Yeung noted that the EIA makes no mention of the specific watchlist creation criteria beyond high-level “categories of images” that can be included, and the claimed equality impacts of that process. For example, it does not consider how people from certain ethnic minority or religious backgrounds could be disproportionally impacted as a result of their over-representation in police databases, or the issue of unlawful custody image retention whereby the Home Office is continuing to hold millions of custody images illegally in the Police National Database (PND). While the ethics panel meeting minutes offer greater insight into how Essex Police is approaching watchlist creation, the custody image retention issue was also not mentioned. Responding to Computer Weekly’s questions about the meeting minutes and the lack of scrutiny of key issues related to UK police LFR deployments, an Essex Police spokesperson said: “Our polices and processes around the use of live facial recognition have been carefully scrutinised through a thorough ethics panel.” Instead, the officer present explained how watchlists and deployments are decided based on the “intelligence case”, which then has to be justified as both proportionate and necessary. On the “Southend intelligence case”, the officer said deploying in the town centre would be permissible because “that’s where the most footfall is, the most opportunity to locate outstanding suspects”. They added: “The watchlist [then] has to be justified by the key elements, the policing purpose. Everything has to be proportionate and strictly necessary to be able to deploy… If the commander in Southend said, ‘I want to put everyone that’s wanted for shoplifting across Essex on the watchlist for Southend’, the answer would be no, because is it necessary? Probably not. Is it proportionate? I don’t think it is. Would it be proportionate to have individuals who are outstanding for shoplifting from the Southend area? Yes, because it’s local.” However, the officer also said that, on most occasions, the systems would be deployed to catch “our most serious offenders”, as this would be easier to justify from a public perception point of view. They added that, during the summer, it would be easier to justify deployments because of the seasonal population increase in Southend. “We know that there is a general increase in violence during those months. So, we don’t need to go down to the weeds to specifically look at grievous bodily harm [GBH] or murder or rape, because they’re not necessarily fuelled by a spike in terms of seasonality, for example,” they said. “However, we know that because the general population increases significantly, the level of violence increases significantly, which would justify that I could put those serious crimes on that watchlist.” Commenting on the responses given to the ethics panel, Yeung said they “failed entirely to provide me with confidence that their proposed deployments will have the required legal safeguards in place”. According to the Court of Appeal judgment against South Wales Police in the Bridges case, the force’s facial recognition policy contained “fundamental deficiencies” in relation to the “who” and “where” question of LFR. “In relation to both of those questions, too much discretion is currently left to individual police officers,” it said. “It is not clear who can be placed on the watchlist, nor is it clear that there are any criteria for determining where AFR [automated facial recognition] can be deployed.” Yeung added: “The same applies to these responses of Essex Police force, failing to adequately answer the ‘who’ and ‘where’ questions concerning their proposed facial recognition deployments. “Worse still, the court stated that a police force’s local policies can only satisfy the requirements that the privacy interventions arising from use of LFR are ‘prescribed by law’ if they are published. The documents were obtained by Big Brother Watch through freedom of information requests, strongly suggesting that these even these basic legal safeguards are not being met.” Yeung added that South Wales Police’s use of the technology was found to be unlawful in the Bridges case because there was excessive discretion left in the hands of individual police officers, allowing undue opportunities for arbitrary decision-making and abuses of power. Every decision ... must be specified in advance, documented and justified in accordance with the tests of proportionality and necessity. I don’t see any of that happening Karen Yeung, Birmingham Law School “Every decision – where you will deploy, whose face is placed on the watchlist and why, and the duration of deployment – must be specified in advance, documented and justified in accordance with the tests of proportionality and necessity,” she said. “I don’t see any of that happening. There are simply vague claims that ‘we’ll make sure we apply the legal test’, but how? They just offer unsubstantiated promises that ‘we will abide by the law’ without specifying how they will do so by meeting specific legal requirements.” Yeung further added these documents indicate that the police force is not looking for specific people wanted for serious crimes, but setting up dragnets for a wide variety of ‘wanted’ individuals, including those wanted for non-serious crimes such as shoplifting. “There are many platitudes about being ethical, but there’s nothing concrete indicating how they propose to meet the legal tests of necessity and proportionality,” she said. “In liberal democratic societies, every single decision about an individual by the police made without their consent must be justified in accordance with law. That means that the police must be able to justify and defend the reasons why every single person whose face is uploaded to the facial recognition watchlist meets the legal test, based on their specific operational purpose.” Yeung concluded that, assuming they can do this, police must also consider the equality impacts of their actions, and how different groups are likely to be affected by their practical deployments: “I don’t see any of that.” In response to the concerns raised around watchlist creation, proportionality and necessity, an Essex Police spokesperson said: “The watchlists for each deployment are created to identify specific people wanted for specific crimes and to enforce orders. To date, we have focused on the types of offences which cause the most harm to our communities, including our hardworking businesses. “This includes violent crime, drugs, sexual offences and thefts from shops. As a result of our deployments, we have arrested people wanted in connection with attempted murder investigations, high-risk domestic abuse cases, GBH, sexual assault, drug supply and aggravated burglary offences. We have also been able to progress investigations and move closer to securing justice for victims.” Read more about police data and technology Metropolitan Police to deploy permanent facial recognition tech in Croydon: The Met is set to deploy permanent live facial recognition cameras on street furniture in Croydon from summer 2025, but local councillors say the decision – which has taken place with no community input – will further contribute the over-policing of Black communities. UK MoJ crime prediction algorithms raise serious concerns: The Ministry of Justice is using one algorithm to predict people’s risk of reoffending and another to predict who will commit murder, but critics say the profiling in these systems raises ‘serious concerns’ over racism, classism and data inaccuracies. UK law enforcement data adequacy at risk: The UK government says reforms to police data protection rules will help to simplify law enforcement data processing, but critics argue the changes will lower protection to the point where the UK risks losing its European data adequacy.

Scene at UKREiiF 2025 outside the Canary bar UKREiiF is getting bigger by the year, with more than 16,000 professionals attending the 2025 construction conference in Leeds this week during three days of sunny weather, networking, panel discussions and robust amounts of booze. It has grown so big over the past few years that it seems almost to have outgrown the city of Leeds itself. A running joke among attendees was the varying quality of accommodation people had managed to secure. All of the budget hotels in the city were fully booked months in advance of the conference, with many - including at least one member of Parliament - reduced to kipping in bed and breakfasts of a questionable nature. Many were forced to stay in nearby towns including York, Wakefield and Bradford and catch the train to the conference each morning. But these snags served as ice breakers for more important conversations at an event which has come at a key pivot point for the industry. With the government on the brink of launching its 10-year industrial strategy and its new towns programme, opportunity was in the air. Networking events between government departments and potential suppliers of all sectors were well attended, although many discussion panels focused on the question of how all of this work would be paid for. And hanging over the conference like a storm cloud were the mounting issues at the Building Safety Regulator which are continuing to cause expensive delays to high rise schemes across the country. While many attendees eyed a huge amount of potential work to fill up pipelines, it was clear the industry is still facing some systemic challenges which could threaten a much-needed recovery following a long period of turmoil. How will the issues at the Building Safety Regulator be fixed? You did not even have to go inside an event titled “Gateways and Growing Pains: Tackling the Building Safety Act” to see how much this issue is affecting construction at the moment. The packed out tent was overflowing into the space outside, with those inside stood like sardines to watch a panel discussion about what has been happening in the high rise residential sector over the past year.  Audience members shared their horror stories of schemes which have been waiting for the best part of a year to get gateway 2 approval from the regulator, which is needed to start construction. There was a palpable sense of anger in the crowd, one professional describing the hold-ups which had affected his scheme as a “disgrace”. Others highlighted the apparent inconsistency of the regulator’s work. One attendee told how two identical buildings had been submitted to the regulator in separate gateway 2 applications and assigned to two separate technical teams for approval. One application had received no follow up questions, while the other had been extensively interrogated. “The industry should hold its head in shame with regard to what happened at Grenfell, but post that, it’s just complete disarray,” he said. More than 16,000 professionals attended the 2025 event While many are currently focusing on delays at pre-construction, others raised the looming gateway 3 approvals which are needed before occupation. Pareto Projects director Kuli Bajwa said: “Gateway 2 is an issue, but when we get to gateway 3, we’re committed to this project, money’s been spent, debt’s been taken out and week on week it’s costing money. It just keeps wracking up, so we need to resolve that with the regulator asap.” >> See also: Homes England boss calls on government to fix ‘unacceptably slow’ gateway 2 approvals Caddick Construction managing director for Yorkshire and the North East Steve Ford added: “I think where it will probably get interesting and quite heated I guess is at the point where some of these schemes get rejected at gateway 3, and the finger pointing starts as to why it’s not got through gateway 3.” Simon Latson, head of living for the UK and Ireland at JLL, offered a potential solution. “We will be dealing with the regulator all the way through the construction process, and you would like to think that there is a collaborative process where you get early engagement and you can say ‘I’m 12 weeks out from completion, I’m going to start sending you all of my completion documents, my fire alarm certificate’, and say ‘thanks very much that’s the last thing on my list’. That’s probably wishful thinking but that’s got to be a practical solution, as early engagement as possible.” How is the government going to pay for its infrastructure strategy? Ministers are expected to outline the government’s ten-year infrastructure strategy next month, outlining ambitions not only for transport but social infrastructure including schools and healthcare. At an event titled “A Decade of National Renewal: What Will This Mean for our Regions, Towns and Cities?”, a panel of experts including London deputy mayor Jules Pipe highlighted how much of this new infrastructure is needed to enable the government to achieve its housing targets. But how will it be funded? Tom Wagner, cofounder of investment firm Knighthead Capital, which operates largely in the West Midlands with assets including Birmingham City FC, gave a frank assessment of the government’s policies on attracting private sector investment. “There have been a lot of policies in the UK that have forced capital allocators to go elsewhere,” he said, calling for lower taxes and less restrictions on private finance in order to stop investors fleeing to more amenable destinations overseas.  “What we’ve found in the UK is, as we’re seeking to tax those who can most afford it, that’s fine, but unless they’re chained here, they’ll just go somewhere else. That creates a bad dynamic because those people are the capital providers, and right now what we need is capital infusion to foster growth.” The main square at the centre of the conference Pipe offered a counterpoint, suggesting low taxes were not the only reason which determines where wealthy people live and highlighted the appeal of cities which had been made livable by good infrastructure. “There are people living in some very expensive cities but they live there because of the cosmopolitan culture and the parks and the general vibe, and that’s what we have to get right. And the key thing that leads to that is good transport, making it livable.” Pipe also criticised the penny-pinching tendencies of past governments on infrastructure investment, including on major transports schemes like Crossrail 2 which were mothballed due to a lack of funds and a perceived lack of value added. “All these things were fought in the trenches with the Treasury about ‘oh well there’s no cost benefit to this’. And where is the major transport like that where after ten years people are saying ‘no one’s using it, that was a really bad idea, it’s never opened up any new businesses or new homes’? It’s absolute nonsense. But that seems to be how we judge it,” he said. One solution could be funding through business rates, an approach used on the Northern Line Extension to Battersea Power Station. But the benefits of this have been largely overlooked, Pipe said. “One scheme every ten or twenty years is not good enough. We need to do this more frequently”. What is the latest on the government’s new towns programme? Where are the new towns going to be built? It was a question which everybody was asking during the conference, with rumours circulating around potential sites in Cambridge of Plymouth. The government is set to reveal the first 12 locations of 10,000 homes each in July, an announcement which will inevitably unleash an onslaught of NIMBY outcries from affected communities. A large crowd gathered for an “exclusive update” on the programme from Michael Lyons, chair of the New Towns Taskforce appointed by the government to recommend suitable sites, with many in attendance hoping for a big reveal on the first sites. They were disappointed, but Lyons did provide some interesting insights into the taskforce’s work. Despite a “rather hairbrained” timescale given to the team, which was only established last September, Lyons said it was at a “very advanced stage” in its deliberations after spending the past few months touring the country speaking to developers, landowners and residents in search of potential sites. >> See also: Don’t scrimp on quality standards for new towns, taskforce chair tells housebuilders “We stand at a crucial moment in the history of home building in this country,” he said. The government’s commitment to so many large-scale developments could herald a return to ambitious spatial planning, he said, with communities strategically located close to the most practical locations for the supply of new infrastructure needed for people to move in. A line of tents at the docks site, including the London Pavilion “Infrastructure constraints, whether it’s water or power, sewage or transport, must no longer be allowed to hold back growth, and we’ve been shocked as we looked around the country at the extent to which plans ready to be advanced are held back by those infrastructure problems,” he said. The first sites will be in places where much of this infrastructure is already in place, he said, allowing work to start immediately.  An emphasis on “identity and legibility” is also part of the criteria for the initial locations, with the government’s design and construction partners to be required to put placemaking at the heart of their schemes. “ We need to be confident that these can be distinctive places, and that the title of new town, whether it’s an urban extension or whether it’s even a reshaping of an existing urban area or a genuine greenfield site, that it genuinely can be seen and will be seen by its residents as a distinct community.” How do you manage a working public-private partnership? Successful public partnerships between the public sector and private housebuilders will be essential for the government to achieve its target to build 1.5 million homes by the end of this parliament in 2029. At an event hosted by Muse, a panel discussed where past partnerships have gone wrong and what lessons have been learned. Mark Bradbury, Thurrock council’s chief officer for strategic growth partnerships and special projects, spoke of the series of events which led to L&Q pulling out of the 2,800-home Purfleet-on-Thames scheme in Essex and its replacement by housing association Swan. “I think it was partly the complex nature of the procurement process that led to market conditions being quite different at the end of the process to the start,” he said. “Some of the original partners pulled out halfway through because their business model changed. I think the early conversations at Purfleet on Thames around the masterplan devised by Will Alsop, the potential for L&Q to be one of the partners, the potential for a development manager, the potential for some overseas investment, ended up with L&Q deciding it wasn’t for their business model going forwards. The money from the far east never materialised, so we ended up with somebody who didn’t have the track record, and there was nobody who had working capital.  “By then it was clear that the former partnership wasn’t right, so trying to persuade someone to join a partnership which wasn’t working was really difficult. So you’ve got to be really clear at the outset that this is a partnership which is going to work, you know where the working capital is coming from, and everybody’s got a track record.” Muse development director for residential Duncan Cumberland outlined a three-part “accelerated procurement process” which the developer has been looking at in order to avoid some of the setbacks which can hit large public private partnerships on housing schemes. The first part is developing a masterplan vision which has the support of community stakeholders, the second is outlining a “realistic and honest” business plan which accommodates viability challenges, and the third is working closely with public sector officials on a strong business case. A good partnership is almost like being in a marriage, Avison Young’s London co-managing director Kat Hanna added. “It’s hard to just walk away. We’re in it now, so we need to make it work, and perhaps being in a partnership can often be more revealing in tough times.”

Old Enemies, New Alliances: Black Ops 6 Season 04 is Here! Though he once had the chance to end Vikhor “Stitch” Kuzmin’s reign of terror, Adler spared his nemesis after they met at the culmination of Black Ops Cold War. Latest intel reveals Kuzmin was later captured and locked up in an Icelandic CIA black site until he might prove useful. Following the events and evidence uncovered by the deceased CIA Agent Jason Hudson, that day has come, and in an unlikely team up, Adler and team have broken Stitch out from his confinement, seeking his help to crack the codenames needed to find the Pantheon moles. With Verdansk once again an area of operations for deployment, what other plans might Stitch have in store? For now, Adler needs him to complete the mission at hand.  To succeed, the two must put their past behind them in pursuit of a new goal. Get in on the action when this stacked offering of free and premium content comes to Call of Duty®: Black Ops 6, launching in Season 04 on Thursday, May 29 at 9AM PT across all platforms. Nomenclature Note: Throughout the blog, you’ll see references to when gameplay content launches. Here are what these various suffixes mean: “Launch”: Expect to access this content immediately at the Season launch “Launch Window”: Expect to access this content between launch and up to 72 hours after launch.  “In Season”: Expect to access this content during the season, but before either the mid-season or next season arrives. “Mid-Season”: Expect to access this content at Mid-Season or later. All content timing may be subject to change. Multiplayer Content Summary Five MP Maps: Drop into Icelandic AOs with three new maps at launch including the Shutdown and Fugitive 6v6 Core maps and the Blitz Strike map. In the mid-season, party it up in Eclipse and play a reimagined Fringe. New and Returning Modes: Pick up dog tags to drain the enemy’s reserves in Team Elimination, a fun new twist on the Kill Confirmed formula. Make every bullet count with the return of One in the Chamber and get festive in the Party Ops Limited-Time Mode. Additional Equipment: The Grim Reaper Scorestreak returns from the original Black Ops, offering an explosive payload that’s guaranteed to blow the competition sky high. Season 04 Ranked Play: Challenge the best of the best, get those wins, and climb the Ranks in a new season of Multiplayer Ranked Play, with all-new rewards and bragging rights. Shutdown (Launch) Brand-New, Core, 6v6, Small-Sized Before breaking out Stitch, Adler and team first need to cut off the power to the black site prison, bringing them to a hydroelectric plant built on the rugged volcanic terrain of Iceland. Fight in and around the central building housing the now wrecked Turbine or dive down the Sluice into the Lake, its waters hugging the plant’s south end by the Transformers. Jump up by the red container to target enemies from far out or swim back onshore to reach the Atrium and Parking. Head to the north side to fight in the rugged Yard, away from the shoreline and bookended by the Pumphouse and Canteen. It’s a quick run to the Turbine from here, giving you good map coverage down the middle. If things get too hot, you can always drop down the Chute and swim your way to safety.  Fugitive (Launch) Brand-New, Core, 6v6, Medium-Sized Deploy to a secret CIA black site in a remote part of Iceland, the very location where Stitch has been imprisoned until Adler brings him in as an unlikely ally for an urgent operation. With the power out, Adler and his crew seize their chance to infiltrate the prison, climbing, zipping, and battling their way through the frozen compound. Upon reaching their target, Adler and Stitch strike a deal. Following the jailbreak, the alarms are blaring and warnings of a power failure light up the Cell Block. Though the area may appear smaller than expected when first glancing at the minimap, the prison’s intricate layout presents multiple levels and shortcuts to the various outside areas including the Checkpoint, Courtyard, and Recreation Yard. In the upper Cell Block, newly opened cells present the danger of ambush. Be on guard and look for ziplines for quick access to your next target. Blitz (Launch) Brand-New, Strike, 6v6/2v2, Small-Sized Traffic comes to a halt as Pantheon reinforcements race toward the prison but get ambushed by the Rogue team. Leave the road and seek out targets over the rugged terrain of the Cliffside or move inland, ambushing enemies at the Waterfall. To approach the battle head on, move down the central Bridge, using the scattered convoy for cover. Jump down from the center to move underneath the Bridge, a great means of pivoting to a new location. Though a small map overall, Blitz’s long lanes leave room for marksmen to shine. Eclipse (Mid-Season) Brand-New, Strike, 6v6/2v2, Small-Sized Stitch and the team arrive in Avalon, slipping into the shadows of an underground nightclub to discuss business. The neon lights flicker as they form a plan to break the Pantheon codenames, but the meeting is cut short when Pantheon agents storm in. Show off your best moves on the dance floor, dodging shots and flanking targets down the sides where seating offers party goers a chance to rest and order a drink from the bar. Ambush passing enemies from the DJ booth and then break through the broken façades on the walls, escaping into the halls. Fringe (Mid-Season) Remaster, Core, 6v6, Medium-Sized Revisit Fringe from Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, reimagined for the first time ever in Black Ops 6. Attend the grand opening of the Rolling Hills distillery, established in an idyllic setting with several navigable buildings and the surrounding grounds. Battle along the main Road or dive into the Bar for a closer fight. Watch for sharpshooters in the upper Barn and along the Bridge and relive the thrill of trying to make it out alive through the narrow Loading route. The first half of Season 04 brings two exciting Multiplayer modes: Team Elimination and One in the Chamber. In the mid-season, loosen up in the Party Ops Limited Time Mode. Team Elimination (Launch) In this twist on Kill Confirmed, two teams are given a limited amount of lives each round as they fight to be the last surviving team. Players drop a dog tag on death that can be picked up by the enemy to confirm the kill or by a teammate to deny the opposing team. Survive longer than the other team or hold the most remaining lives when the timer ends to win the round. Balance aggression and defense as you seek out enemy dog tags while preserving your life. Dig in with your teammates to counter enemy attacks and then ask for cover while you collect the droppings. Picking up tags is a great way to earn your next Scorestreak, so stay aggressive and keep up the momentum. Once your team’s life pool is drained, your remaining teammates can still revive you where you were last killed in a last-ditch effort to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. One in the Chamber (In-Season) Another Black Ops fan-favorite mode returns as One in the Chamber shows up in Season 04! In this free-for-all mode, each Operator is given one pistol, one bullet, a knife, and three lives. Precision is king, as bullets always eliminate on impact and the only way to earn another bullet is to get an elimination. Stay cool, aim true, and preserve your lives while aiming for the highest score. UAV scans keep the action moving, so don’t try to hide. At the end of the match, the top three scoring Operators will step up to the Winner’s Circle. Party Ops (Mid-Season) Get the party started with a new Limited-Time Mode arriving later in the season: Compete in a randomized set of party themed minigames. The player with the highest score at the end of the match wins it all. The devastating Grim Reaper Scorestreak is back from the original Black Ops, unleashing massive hits on other Operators and Scorestreaks alike. New Scorestreak Scorestreak: Grim Reaper (In-Season) Type: Lethal Score: 725 Mastery Badges: Yes Powerful semi-automatic launcher that can fire up to four rockets in one load. Wield the Grim Reaper, a quad tube loaded Launcher capable of inflicting heavy damage on enemies. Whether targeting Operators or locking on to enemy Scorestreaks, the Grim Reaper’s payload delivers a huge explosion. The weapon is lost if you’re taken out, so save it for the right moment and bring backup to ensure you have the protection needed to unleash havoc.  Season 04 Ranked Play Overview Prove you’re the very best by dedicating your Multiplayer match time to Ranked Play, using the same settings, maps, modes, and weapon restrictions used by the Call of Duty League™. Win matches to earn SR (Skill Rating) and progress through the Ranks while earning career rewards like Rank Skins and Win Challenge rewards. As usual, match wins ensure you progress through the Ranks throughout Season 04 to earn new seasonal rewards like a new Pro Issue Weapon Blueprint, Rank-themed Calling Cards, Ranked Charms, and more: Season 04 Ranked Play Rewards Get 10 Wins: “Pro Reissue AMES 85” AMES 85 Weapon Blueprint Get 100 Wins: “Ranked Season 4 – 100 Wins” Large Decal Silver: “Ranked Season 4 – Silver” Calling Card Gold: “Ranked Season 4 – Gold” Calling Card and Charm Platinum: “Ranked Season 4 – Platinum” Calling Card and Charm Diamond: “Ranked Season 4 – Diamond” Calling Card and Charm Crimson: “Ranked Season 4 – Crimson” Calling Card and Charm Iridescent: “Ranked Season 4 – Iridescent” Calling Card and Charm Top 250: “Ranked Season 4 – Top 250” Calling Card and Charm Season 04 Champion: “Ranked Season 4 – Top 250 Champion” Calling Card Note: Multiplayer Events: Check the General section later in this blog to uncover the full complement of events for this mode across Season 04. Zombies Content Summary Grief Returns! Drop into this epic 4v4 competitive battle on all maps, outlasting the opposition while securing Capture Zones to debuff and Grief your opponents. The last team still standing wins! Additional Gameplay Content: Crack open the armored undead and create area-of-effect explosions with the Shatter Blast Ammo Mod, chew over the impressive effects of three new GobbleGums, and create even bigger explosions with the Grim Reaper Support launcher. New Modes and More: Unlock hidden rewards with more Dark Ops Challenges, then prepare to face down a powered-up Abomination, survive as long as you can in the Starting Room LTM, and prove your Leaderboard worth by zombie slaying for bragging rights and rewards! 4v4 competitive mode where two teams outwit and outlast each other. Capture zones to debuff enemies. No damage against other players. Respawns every third round. Available Maps: Liberty Falls, Terminus, Citadelle des Morts, The Tomb, Shattered Veil. Restricted: Wonder Weapons, GobbleGums: Exit Strategy, Idle Eyes, Wonderbar!, Time Out, and Flavor Hex (Season 04 GobbleGum).  Not seen since Black Ops 2, Grief returns to Zombies! This fan-favorite mode pits two teams of four against each other, with both sides vying to out-survive the other. As the battlelines are drawn between S.A.M. and Director Richtofen, each team pledges their support to one of these rivals at the start of a match, subsequently receiving handler comms support from one of them throughout the ensuing chaos. Indirect PvP Combat The action is almost immediate as both teams drop into either side of the same Grief Arena within the chosen Zombies map, and indirect PvP combat comes into effect: The two teams of four players can’t outright kill members of the enemy team, but can interact with them by body-blocking, or slowing them  by using melee, bullet-based weapons, or projectiles.  Victory Conditions: The winning team is the one that manages to “Grief” their rivals into being killed or entering a downed state. As long as one or more team members are upright, the match continues! Grief Arena Features The action is constant and can get incredibly chaotic, due in part to your proximity to your opponents and the hordes of undead encroaching on your team, thanks to the Arena being a sub-section of the main Zombies map. These are known as “Grief Arenas.” Within a Grief Arena are a variety of features: An Open Environment: Grief Arenas are clearly defined areas where any critical doors have already been opened, and the power will already have been turned on. All other Door Buys are inactive. Both teams spawn on opposite sides of the Arena, each in a group of four. Player Respawning: Any team members that are downed – provided one or more of their team are still alive – can be revived at any time, though rival teams, undead enemies, and Shock Charges can hamper this action! Additionally, a Wave Respawner triggers every third round, automatically reviving any eliminated teammates from both teams. Join In Progress: Any player not in the game can join up until Round 10 has been completed and has a small grace period to orient themselves before they’re swarmed by zombies. Additionally, if a team has won back-to-back Capture Zones (see below), join-in-progress is not available. Essence and Salvage: Unlike in Standard playlists, Salvage pickups in Grief are worth 100 Salvage, visible to all players, and can only be picked up by the first player to grab it. Zombies: Rounds will progress faster than usual and the amount of zombies per round has been increased to account for 8 players! All undead entities – except for bosses – are to be expected. If players fail to kill zombies, the round will turn. Core Mechanics: The Arsenal, Pack-a-Punch, Mystery Box, Crafting Tables, Perk machines, GobbleGum machine (with Exit Strategy, Idle Eyes, Wonderbar!, Time Out, and Flavor Hex restricted), Armor Wall Buys, and Der Wunderfizz machine are available in a Grief Arena where they normally reside, or in a new location if they don’t normally exist in this portion of their respective maps. Note: While the current GobbleGum restrictions are in place to keep matches dynamic yet balanced, additional restrictions may be made in the future as the developers keep an eye on game balance, similar to Ranked Play. Capture Zones: Appearing at a regular cadence during a match, these are smaller areas within a Grief Arena where players are required to stand and earn specific types of kills to trigger a Grief  on the opposing team. Plan A: Survive! Plan B: Capture Zones! Keeping your team upright and focused on undead slaying for longer than your rivals is the main plan in this mode. However, there’s an important secondary focus you need to plan for: Capturing zones and “Griefing” your rival team! Capture Zones appear at regular intervals throughout a match, and after stepping through the glowing perimeter, you and your team can secure the Zone by staying inside it and dispatching zombies. Beckon your crew into a Zone to quicken the zombie slaying, and once your kill count meets the requirement, a Grief is triggered on the opposition. Note that if neither team reaches this requirement within the countdown inside a Capture Zone, the Grief is applied to both teams. What is a Grief? It’s a temporary debuff, penalty, or negative gameplay mechanic that you can inflict on your rival team at a Capture Zone. The type of Grief is shown at the objective tracker within a Capture Zone. Here are the possible Griefs you’re aiming to inflict on your foes: Weapon Nerf: The affected players inflict considerably reduced damage to zombie enemies. Ammo Drain: All ammo-based weapons, including those stowed, receive an ammo drain with bullets or shells being removed constantly while the Grief is active. Zombie Ambush: An Elite zombie is summoned, and it solely focuses its killing power on the enemy team until either the Elite or the team are defeated, or the timer runs out. Weapon Carousel: The rival players’ weapons are randomly swapped every few seconds. Frozen: This Grief reduces the enemy players’ movement, along with frost and ice coating the characters. Griefs and Capture Zones also introduce new score types, including: Capture Zone Kill: Awarded to a player who defeated a zombie type during a successful Capture Zone completion. Capture Zone Win: Awarded to all players on a team who successfully commandeer a Capture Zone. Capture Zone Elite Kill: Awarded to a player who slays an Elite spawned in a Capture Zone. Available Grief Arenas (11 Arenas, Launch) A total of 11 different Grief Arenas are available in this mode. Here’s a list along with a brief description of the points of interest within each one: Liberty Falls Arena 1: Pump & Pay, Motor Lodge, and Fuller’s Liberty Lanes Liberty Falls Arena 2: Dark Aether Church, Cemetery, Hilltop Terminus Arena 1: Bio Lab Terminus Arena 2: Crab Island  Citadelle des Morts Arena: Courtyard, Ramparts, and Entrance Hall The Tomb Arena 1: Dig Site, Mausoleum The Tomb Arena 2: Dark Aether Nexus Shattered Veil Arena 1: Garden Pond, Lower Terrace Shattered Veil Arena 2: Upper Terrace, Shem’s Henge, Motor Court Shattered Veil Arena 3: Mansion Foyer, Overlook, East Foyer, Library Shattered Veil Arena 4: West Hallways, Southwest Balcony, Bottlery Access the following new content within all five Zombies Maps (unless otherwise stated) throughout Season 04: Dark Ops Challenges (Launch) A mysterious new set of hidden Calling Cards and bounteous amounts of XP are available at the start of Season 04, thanks to a fresh drop of Zombies Dark Ops Challenges. Who knows... maybe there’s even one for Grief. All further information is [[REDACTED]]. New LTM: Starting Room (Mid-Season) Inspired by the starting room in the classic “Moon” Zombies map, drop in with up to three of your Zombies crew into a more straightforward but challenging experience where you’re locked into the first zone of a map. Raptor One is gone, and those undead hordes are only getting stronger, but all doors in the initial zone are locked. Survive to the highest round you can! New LTM: Abomination Challenge (Mid-Season) Enter a warped version of Liberty Falls during this new Mid-Season Event, and hunt down an ultra-powered-up Abomination. Perhaps it’s wise to bring backup. Wreck even the most battle-hardened undead threat with the explosive power of the Shatter Blast Ammo Mod, then drop even more devastating firepower on the hordes with the Grim Reaper Support launcher. There’s three new chewables, too! Ammo Mod: Shatter Blast (Launch) Available: Augments Menu, and In-Game (Pause Menu) “Bullets deal explosive damage. Each bullet has a chance to create an explosion that destroys armor.” Modify your ammunition to explode the toughened armor of certain normal and Special undead enemies. This mod also has a second benefit, creating an area-of-effect blast radius at the same time, whether any armor is shattered or not.  Due to the somewhat chaotic nature of this modification, there is a random chance of the Shatter Blast effect triggering, and it won’t happen every time you fire. Also expect a cooldown period after the effect. Note that Shatter Blast doesn’t directly affect Elite enemies (pending some Augment research!), but area-of-effect explosions can still damage them. You are wise to wrangle your undead into hordes so they’re near each other, to really inflict some damage! Shatter Blast: Major Augments Research the following Augments to further customize this Ammo Mod. Big Game Shatter Blast can be used against Elite enemies. Expect an impressively sized explosion. Blast Chain On explosion, three additional explosions occur in rapid succession. Blast Repair For every enemy that has its armor destroyed by Shatter Blast, armor health will be restored for the player. Shatter Blast: Minor Augments Blast Zone Increase the size of the explosion. Blast Boost Increase the explosion damage. Blast Wave Normal enemies are knocked down by the explosion. New GobbleGums (Launch) Crack your teeth on three new GobbleGums, available across all maps once you earn or unlock them and equip them in your GobbleGum Loadout Pack. Explosive Flourish (Epic): Reloading your weapon creates an explosion around you. GobbleGum lasts 2 minutes. Flavor Hex (Legendary): Activates a random Ultra GobbleGum. Rainburps (Whimsical): Zombies killed belch sparkly rainbow bubbles. Lasts 3 minutes. Additional Support Weapon: Grim Reaper (In-Season) Available: Rivals Event reward Salvage: 2000 Hammer away at the Crafting Table and assemble a powerful semi-automatic launcher known as the Grim Reaper, which deals out lethal damage to the undead with up to a quartet of missiles fired in one load. With a capacity to carry up to a dozen rockets, and the ability to fire them individually or as a quartet of devastation, this can level a courtyard of undead with a single launch! Unlock this Support weapon once you’ve earned it via the Rivals Event. Note: Zombies Events: Check the General section later in this blog to uncover a first look at events for this mode across Season 04, including the King of the Dead Leaderboard challenge! Call of Duty: Warzone Content Summary New Point of Interest: The towering skyscraper known as The Overlook comes to Downtown Verdansk, with ziplines, cranes, and an impressive interior to explore. New and Limited Time Modes: Clash mode – the massive 52v52 Verdansk Deathmatch – is back! Join 51 other Operators in a chaotic firefight to claim domination points and defeat foes. Then compete in a specially themed area of Verdansk in a match with rule-bending modifiers in Havoc Royale. And drop into Rebirth Island for a spot of Resurgence Casual human and bot combat. Doubling Down on Ranked Play: Call of Duty: Warzone doubles down – literally – with two separate Ranked Play modes; Battle Royale: Ranked (Verdansk) at launch running throughout the entire season, and the return of Ranked Play to Rebirth Island at Mid-season. New Features: Cranes and horizontal ziplines Downtown. Lobby Lockdown in The Overlook. Look up and look out!  Dominate foes with a gigantic new skyscraper point of interest, available to Operators within the vicinity of Downtown! The old tenement blocks, Burger Town, and SKN Comm tower have been demolished, and construction crews are finalizing a sprawling skyscraper that dominates the landscape! Look for a full recon tour below. Recon Tour: The Overlook As construction nears completion on this behemoth of a skyscraper (more than twice the height of any previous building within the Verdansk conurbation), it’s worth gaining a tactical advantage on this monolithic new point of interest. The Overlook Footprint: The “Diamond” and Perimeter Security Checkpoints Drop into the grounds of The Overlook, and you’ll immediately see the grounds of the new skyscraper under construction stretch in a rough diamond shape around the location of the old SKN Comm Tower. Flanked by two massive cranes, the building plot perimeter runs from the corner of the main bank, clockwise past the Post Office, passing the Rothwynn Donna building, northeast to the Museum/Art Gallery, and follows the road around to City Hall.  All the older structures (the Burger Town, low-rise tenement blocks, the building site, and the small coffee shop and bar across from the Museum) have been bulldozed in the name of progress! Perimeter Security Checkpoints Military-style security checkpoints have been set up on the corners and roads of the plot of land within the footprint of the structure. Most aren’t secure enough to impede vehicular progress, and some have ramps to allow airborne access. These serve as helpful visual cues that you’re entering the new POI, The Overlook.  Ground Level: Construction Sites Most of the groundwork around the skyscraper is in its final stages of completion, but there are plenty of barriers, fencing, canopies, and containers to use as cover in the area below each of the two giant cranes north and south of the structure. Ground Level: Restaurants Burger Town: Fans of the famous Burger Town Double Cheeseburger will be thrilled to know the fast-food chain has relocated a few meters further down the road from its previous location and is contained within the massive footprint of The Overlook. This outlet also serves as a lower entrance into the grand foyer interior of the building. Sushi Bar: Diagonally opposite the Burger Town, on the northwest side of the POI, is a small Sushi bar, within the footprint of the tower itself. Nestled in the stepped courtyard, you can quickly advance to the north crane or main lobby entrance. It’s also worth pointing out that the sight lines around this POI have significantly changed since Season 03, with much greater visibility across familiar POIs within Downtown and the surrounding districts. North and South Cranes Two huge cranes flank the north and south side of the monolith and are another way to traverse into The Overlook at great height. With five separate platforms attached to the mast to land on (two at ground, and three at height), use the vertical Ascender built into the crane’s mast and take an eight-second ascent to a platform just below the jib that extends out to the main winch, and the hoist allowing a jump to The Overlook roof. Operators who aren’t challenged by vertigo will have wild and panoramic views that extend to all of Verdansk’s POIs (except Quarry)! Both cranes are also functional, and providing you’ve found the necessary controls in the vicinity (both on and off the cranes’ superstructures), cargo on the hook block and hoist can be summoned and moved to various locations around the tower and nearby Downtown buildings, in case you or your team needs a daring lift! Zip Lines and Additional Rooftop Cover Increasing the ways you can quickly traverse and gain (or lose) great height in your tactical positioning near The Overlook exterior, zip-lines provide a diagonal route to and from the surrounding Downtown building rooftops.  Each also has a small billboard or other protective cover as you reach the zipline mechanism. Access to and from Overlook at the following locations: South: Post Office rooftop to Skydeck. West: Rothwynn Donna building rooftop to Skydeck. Northeast: Art Gallery/Museum rooftop to Skydeck. East: City Hall dome rooftop to Skydeck.  The Overlook: Entrance and Lobby Lockdown The Overlook has a substantial exterior and interior presence, mainly tiered fountains, planting, and stairs up to forecourts and shuttered entrances to the north, east, south, and west, all leading to a central interior lobby. If you find the main entrances shuttered, it means the lobby is experiencing a lockdown. Perhaps there’s a way to breach this security? Are there other ways to get in? The interior lobby has a coffee shop, mezzanine office, stairs, a variety of cover options, and other areas to investigate, not least the marginally terrifying 18-storey elevator ascenders to the northeast and southwest, and even those only get you halfway up the inside of the tower. The Overlook: Atrium and Skydeck (Interior, Exterior) Just above the midway point within The Overlook tower is a five-floor interior with exterior Skydeck. Depending on your use of ziplines, you’re able to access a large Atrium with concrete tile and planters and an abundance of plant life. Around the perimeter are rooms, stairwells, and two new elevator shafts, all enabling you to reach the exterior Skydeck. Known by some locals as the “cyclops” tower, due to this large central upper opening you can fly a helicopter through, the Skydeck features a small glass pyramid, some windswept seating, and infiltration to the floors above.  The large, rectangular holes on all four sides provide zipline access around Downtown, as well as daring helicopter maneuvers through the gaps. The ascent doesn’t end here; enter any of the four pillars holding up the roof of the skyscraper for another elevator ascender ride. The Overlook: Penthouse (Interior), Roof (Exterior) The remaining upper floors of The Overlook are nearing completion, meaning health and safety rules aren’t being observed as stringently as you’d like. Top floors up from the Skydeck is the roof. Missing windows, exterior gantries without railings, and exposed exterior ladders mean you’ll be thankful for your parachute.  Depending on which of the tower corners you’re fighting through, this offers another five floors to investigate, including rooms that are fully furnished.  These include a security and server room, a two-floor penthouse level with opulent bedroom, kitchen, and games area, and that’s before the more perturbed of Operators learn the secrets of the [[REDACTED]] room!  As well as the usual Battle Royale and Resurgence playlists across Verdansk and Rebirth Island, major modes – Clash and Battle Royale: Ranked Play – return to the game, with the intriguing Havoc Royale and the arrival of Resurgence: Ranked Play on Rebirth Island at mid-season! Clash LTM (Launch) 104 players (52v52), 15-minute matches 52v52 Team Deathmatch chaos is back in Call of Duty: Warzone! First introduced into Call of Duty: Warzone during Season Five of Black Ops Cold War back in September 2021 as a revamped version of the original “Rumble” mode, Clash is back, bigger than ever, and now includes some impressive, game-changing equipment and power-ups only available in this mode. But what is Clash Mode? This is Team Deathmatch and Domination on a massive scale! Overview, Win Conditions, and Scoring This action-packed team-based mode takes place in and around a specific POI within Verdansk, and pits two teams of 52 players (divided into 13 Quad Squads per side) against each other. With no Circle Collapse, no last stand benefit for the Survivor Perk, and your Loadouts available immediately, the plan is simple; your side needs to acquire 500 points by the end of the 15-minute time limit. These are mainly gained by slaying enemies (sometimes aided with power ups you can acquire within a match), completing contracts, and participating in the in-game Public Events, as well as the following: Scoring: 1 point per enemy elimination 2 points per enemy elimination with Double Down Power Up 5 points per Contract completed 10 points for capturing a Domination Point (Flag) 10 points for capturing a Bonus Crate or a Cash Crate Clash: Available Locations Expect Clash matches to occur across a sub-section of the main Verdansk map, incorporating several adjacent areas around the following POIs: Quarry Boneyard Farmland Promenade (East) Clash: Available Vehicles With the impetus to reach the enemy forces never more important, expect heavy use of vehicles throughout a Clash Match. The full complement of currently available ground and air vehicles are as follows: Heli Cargo Truck LTV (Light Tactical Vehicle) Polaris RZR Pro R 4 Available Contracts There are three available Contracts to complete in Clash Mode: Scavenger Search and Destroy Recon The Scavenger and Recon Contracts work in the same way as they do in Battle Royale Matches. In addition to the usual rewards and in-game cash, you receive five team points for each Contract completed. Search and Destroy Contracts (Clash Mode Only): Everything must go with this new contract, where one team plants a bomb on a Buy Station, and on detonation, they can earn impressive rarity weapons and items from the Buy Stations’ inventory. The other teams can defuse the bomb to earn a Fire Sale for a major discount from the Buy Stations.  Expect the Search and Destroy Contract to be available in Battle Royale, Resurgence, and Plunder Modes, at Mid-Season. In-Match Events and Domination Points During a Clash match, expect several in-match Events to occur. These are like those in Battle Royale Matches, though Clash Events are timed throughout the match rather than related to the Circle Collapse. The available Events are: Domination Points Bonus Points Crates Clash Firesale Cash Crates Power Surge Domination Points Event: Up to three single capture Dom Points (flags) appear on the map, and these respawn throughout the match. Much like the Multiplayer Mode of the same name, a team that reaches and captures one of the Dom Points receives a reward; in this case, 10 team points. Bonus Points Crates Event: A cargo plane flies across the center of the map, and up to four crates are dropped. Teams are likely to head to the crates as they float to the ground, as capturing a crate awards you with 10 team points. Clash Firesale Event: For the next two minutes, all players can take advantage of a Firesale as two Portable Buy Stations are dropped into the backfield of each team (a total of four). Additionally, all loot crates are restocked and cash found in crates is also increased.  Cash Crates: Capture one (or more) of the three Cash Crates that drop during this event also nets you 10 team points. Power Surge Event: For the next two minutes, there’s an increased drop rate of Power Ups when you dispatch an enemy player or loot any ground caches. Clash Mode Gameplay Features As well as the previously mentioned new Search and Destroy Contract, Clash comes loaded with features unique to the mode. Here’s the full run-down of what to expect: Buy Stations (Clash Mode only): Expect Buy Stations to be scattered across a Clash map and roughly split between each team’s area of operations. Portable Buy Stations are also available during the Firesale In-Match Event. Here’s what you can purchase: Armor Plate: $500 Munitions Box: $1,000 Trophy System: $1,500 Counter UAV: $3,000 Sentry Turret: $3,000 Hand Cannon: $4,000 Bunker Buster: $4,000 Cluster Strike: $4,000 Precision Airstrike: $6,000 Specialist Perk: $10,000 New Field Upgrade: Door Barricade (Clash Mode at Season Launch): Control access points more easily during mid or close-quarter combat scenarios and delay enemy incursions with the Door Barricade. Fit a barricade to a close single or double door, and a heavy-duty lock attaches to (and is visible on) both sides, preventing the opening or access through the door. This is until the barricade is either removed (only by the Operator or squadmates who fitted it), or destroyed, usually by using explosives, though gunfire and melee equipment is also an option. Expect the Door Barricade to be loot in Battle Royale and Battle Royale Casual Modes, via the new Care Package Killstreak, all coming at Mid-Season. New Killstreak: Hand Cannon (Clash Mode at Season Launch): This high-powered pistol Killstreak, originally available in Multiplayer during Season 01, is available in ground cache as rare loot. Expect a slow rate of fire and finite ammunition, but good handling, and improved hip fire accuracy with faster hip-fire shooting speed. Expect the Hand Cannon to be rare loot in Battle Royale, Battle Royale Casual, Resurgence, and Plunder Modes, via the new Care Package Killstreak, all coming at Mid-Season. Feature: SAM Turrets (Clash Mode only): Chopper and drone pilots take note; Clash mode maps feature SAM Turrets in various tactical positions across the environment. Spend $1,500 of in-match cash to activate these anti-air missile batteries and use them up to four times to target any aircraft and drones in the area. If you’re flying in the Heli on the receiving end of a SAM barrage, now’s the time to utilize flares to counter the incoming missiles! Train (Clash Mode only): If a Clash map features a portion of the large, circular railroad track that the train travels along, then this hulking engine and loot-filled carriages are parked and available to use as added cover and looting opportunities. UAV Towers (Clash Mode only): Providing you have the $2,000 in-match cash to activate them, teams can head to and capture a few scattered UAV Towers, allowing pinging of enemy movement across the local area. Clash Mode Powerups  Clash Mode features five differently hued in-match Powerups that are automatically used when found. Available as a possible loot drop or sometimes appearing as dropped loot near the body of an eliminated enemy Operator, these Powerups are color-coded and offer temporary benefits to the Operator who grabs them. All five can be obtained in a single match and expect the frequency of available Powerups to be significantly increased if the in-match Power Surge Event activates (usually in the final stages of a match). Here’s what each of the five Clash Powerups grant you: Hunter (Red Aura): Highlights enemies and allies in red and blue respectively. Allies are visible through walls. Applies Tracker and High Alert Perks. Speed Boost (Yellow Aura): Prevents fall damage and provides approximately 20 percent speed boost to your movement. Regeneration Aura (Green Aura): Refills your health and armor at roughly 20 percent per second. Allies within a small radius around you also receive this benefit. The effect does not stack. Double Down (Blue Aura): Grants you two points per enemy Operator elimination instead of one. Kill Mag (Purple Aura): Refills your active weapon magazine after a kill and quickens your reload. Havoc Royale LTM (Mid-Season) 44 players (Quads), 15-minute matches Compete in a Call of Duty: Warzone match like no other, where rule bending modifiers twist the realities of the usual Resurgence gameplay in chaotic and game-changing ways.  Drop into a specially themed area of Verdansk with your Loadout. Every new gas circle activates a different modifier. Adapt fast to sudden changes as Havoc modifiers may impact you, the environment, and even the gameplay rules. Survive the Havoc, be the last team standing, and claim victory! Expect a full rundown of this game mode in the Season 04 Reloaded blog, just prior to Mid-season. Resurgence Casual (Mid-Season) 44 Players, Players & Bots Infil into Rebirth Island with your squad and commit to winning using the regular Resurgence ruleset, but with one important twist; some of your adversaries aren’t human! Whether facing down a bot or not, Resurgence Casual is a great mode to drop into whether you’re warming up, teaching a new player about the game, or you’re wanting a Resurgence match that isn’t quite as extreme as normal. As with Battle Royale Casual or Call of Duty: Warzone Bootcamp, game progression is limited in this mode and results will not count towards or against your stats. This mode also doesn’t count towards your eligibility to accessing Resurgence Ranked Play when it arrives at Mid-Season. Grind your way towards a coveted position in the Top 250 as Battle Royale: Ranked Play becomes the first of two Ranked Play variants to drop in Season 04 within Call of Duty: Warzone. Harness the competitive spirit and earn new rewards for ranking up and advancing through the Skill Divisions, unlocking the following rewards as you go: Season 04 BR Ranked Play Rewards First Season Win: Weapon Charm Get 25 Eliminations: Elimination Sticker Get 100 Eliminations: Elimination Weapon Camo Get 250 Eliminations: Elimination LR 7.62 Weapon Blueprint Silver: “Ranked Season 4 – Silver” Emblem Gold: “Ranked Season 4 – Gold” Emblem and Decal Platinum: “Ranked Season 4 – Platinum” Emblem and Decal Diamond: “Ranked Season 4 – Diamond” Emblem and Decal Crimson: “Ranked Season 4 – Crimson” Emblem and Decal Iridescent: “Ranked Season 4 – Iridescent” Emblem and Decal Top 250: “Ranked Season 4 – Top 250” Emblem and Decal Season 04 Champion: “Ranked Season 4 – Top 250 Champion” Emblem Ranked Play: Resurgence (Mid-Season) Trios, Rebirth Island Craving some real competition on Rebirth Island? Then squad up with your winning Trio, and attempt dominance over the very best players as Resurgence Ranked Play makes its triumphant return! Expect the same rules set you remember during the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare® III era, and an expanded look at this returning, fan-favorite mode in the Season 04 Reloaded blog, just prior to Mid-season. Ranked Play Notes: Battle Royale: Ranked Play (Verdansk) runs from Launch Window throughout the entirety of Season 04. Resurgence: Ranked Play (Rebirth Island) begins at Mid-Season, and runs alongside Battle Royale: Ranked Play, meaning you can play one or both Modes when they are active. The ranking is separate from Battle Royale: Ranked Play. A new Contract, Field Upgrade, Killstreak, Perk, and ATV are all set to drop into Verdansk during Season 04: Clash Mode Features Expansion (Mid-Season) After an evaluation period in Call of Duty: Warzone’s Clash Mode, expect the following new equipment to become available across additional modes at mid-season. Here’s what to expect: Contract: Search & Destroy: Battle Royale, Resurgence, Plunder. Field Upgrade: Door Barricade: Battle Royale, Battle Royale Casual Modes. Available via Care Package. Killstreak: Hand Cannon: Battle Royale, Battle Royale Casual, and Plunder Modes. Available via Care Package. Killstreak: Care Package (Mid-Season) Open ground loot caches for a rare chance to obtain the Care Package, a throwable Killstreak that, when lobbed, explodes into trail of smoke, after which a loadout-sized crate falls from the skies. Open this crate for a chance to obtain rare loot including rare equipment, the Specialist Perk, and more. New Perk: Loot Master (Mid-Season) Available only as Ground Loot during Resurgence and Plunder matches, the Loot Master Perk allows you to maximize your scavenging potential and gear up faster by increasing the amount of loot you find while opening caches. Gain the early advantage or sustain yourself during prolonged engagements. Expect an increased drop rate for equipped weapon ammo, a higher chance to find tacticals and lethals, more cash, and a greater chance at field upgrades, killstreaks, and other high-tier gear. ATV: Polaris Sportsman XP 1000 (Launch) Added to the vehicle pool is the Polaris Sportsman XP 1000, a real wild ride allowing you to hit the Verdansk goat trails in comfort with legendary suspension, great clearance and traction, and versatility for positioning up to three Operators on the surface of the vehicle. Compared to the current ATV, the wheelbase and size of the Sportsman XP 1000 offers more stability than ever before.  Note: Call of Duty: Warzone Events: Check the General section later in this blog to uncover the full complement of events for this mode across Season 04. General Content (MP, ZM, WZ) Call of Duty: General Content Summary (All Modes and Games) Weapons Detail: Five new weapons arrive in Season 04, including two at launch: the LC10 SMG and FFAR 1 Assault Rifle. Later in the season, get your hands on the , Essex Model 07 Marksman Rifle, Olympia Special weapon and Pickaxe Melee weapon, and change up your playstyle with new attachments. The Events Horizon: Season 04 is packed with Events, including Rivals, Ballerina (From the World of John Wick), and even more coming mid-season.. Plus, prove your worth across the Zombies leaderboards and become King of the Dead! Battle Pass and BlackCell: The Season 04 Battle Pass brings Stitch and brutal BlackCell Operator Omen to the forefront alongside new Weapon Blueprints, Operator Skins, Calling Cards, Finishing Moves, Emotes, and more in a mix of free and premium tiers. Free tiers include two new base weapons and the G-Grip Tactical Foregrip. Season 04 Operators: Stitch returns after being freed from prison, headlining the new Battle Pass next to the sinister Omen leading BlackCell. Plus, deploy as assassin Eve Macarro in a collaboration with Ballerina, followed by much more at the mid-season. CDL Announcements: Major IV is almost here! Find out where to watch, plus the in-game rewards you can unlock, just for tuning in! Primary Weapon: LC10 (Launch) SMG, Battle Pass Page 3, Page 14 Battle Pass Blueprint Levels: 38 MAGS: 4 MAG SIZE: 34 Mastery Badges: Yes Attachments: Optic, Muzzle, Barrel, Underbarrel, Magazine, Rear Grip, Stock, Laser, Fire Mods Customize Options: Skins, Camos and Reticle Unlocks (MP, ZM, WZ), Accessories (1), Decals (1), Stickers (3). Full-auto submachine gun. Excellent accuracy and range, with a moderate rate of fire. Average mobility and very slow handling for its class. Returning after its debut in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, the LC10 SMG spits out rounds fast coupled with good accuracy and range, moderate damage, and a quick reload to get you back into the fight. The weapon performs well off the hip or down sights, with 34 rounds in the base magazine for a hefty ammo supply. Via Gunsmith, equip a variety of improvements such as a Laser for improved hipfire spread and an updated Barrel to further extend the weapon’s respectable damage range. Primary Weapon: FFAR 1 (Launch) Assault Rifle, Battle Pass Page 6, Page 11 HVT Tier Battle Pass Blueprint Levels: 42 MAGS: 3 MAG SIZE: 30 Mastery Badges: Yes Attachments: Optic, Muzzle, Barrel, Underbarrel, Magazine, Rear Grip, Stock, Laser, Fire Mods Customize Options: Skins, Camo and Reticle Unlocks (MP, ZM, WZ), Accessories (1), Decals (1), Stickers (3).  Full-auto assault rifle. Very high rate of fire and excellent CQB power, but slower handling and mobility. Boasting a blazing fast fire rate that rivals the SMG weapon class, this bullpup Assault Rifle is designed for taking down targets fast. The somewhat unpredictable recoil favors burst fire when tackling distant targets, but once you’re locked on it’s all over for them. Supporting a variety of Underbarrel Launcher attachments, use Gunsmith to add greater versatility to the weapon. Running low on ammo? Grab an Extended Mag while you’re at it. Primary Weapon: Essex Model 07 (In-Season) Marksman Rifle, Event Reward Levels: 38 MAGS: 3 MAG SIZE: 8 Mastery Badges: Yes Attachments: Optic, Muzzle, Barrel, Underbarrel, Magazine, Lever, Stock, Laser, Fire Mods Customize Options: Skins, Camo and Reticle Unlocks (MP, ZM, WZ), Accessories (1), Decals (1), Stickers (3). Lever-action marksman rifle. High damage potential. Balanced by slower rate of fire and handling. Inflict heavy critical point damage with this lever-action tactical rifle. An ideal tool for the new sheriff in town, this classic armament offers smooth handling with shots that quickly recenter after kicking up. Choose from a variety of Levers to further customize the weapon’s action, improving ADS speed, sprint to fire speed, and other movement abilities.  Special Weapon: Olympia (Mid-Season) Special, Event Reward Levels: 30 MAGS: 8 MAG SIZE: 2 Mastery Badges: Yes Attachments: Barrel, Stock Customize Options: Skins, Camos (MP, ZM, WZ), Accessories (1), Decals (1), Stickers (3). Double-barrel shotgun. Very high damage and respectable range but requires frequent reloading. The double-barrel Olympia – not seen since Black Ops 3 – makes its debut in Black Ops 6, returning as a Special Weapon that makes for the perfect backup when entering tight spaces. The Olympia holds two shots at a time, each spraying multiple pellets when your Operator pulls the trigger. Light customization via the Short Barrel and Cut-Off Stock attachments gives you some control over the weapon’s playstyle, but the fundamentals remain the same: get up close and make your shots count. Fire down the sight for a tighter pellet spread or shoot off the hip to inflict damage over a wider area. Melee Weapon: Pickaxe (Mid-Season) Melee, Event Reward Levels: 30 Mastery Badges: Yes Attachments: None Customize Options: Skins. One-hit kill. Medium attack speed. Short range. Without a Pickaxe, you’ll be lost in the tundra. Bring the right tool for the job when deploying to Iceland in Season 04’s Multiplayer maps, starting with this deadly Melee weapon that downs unarmored enemies with brutal severity. Though its range is short, the Pickaxe’s combination of rapid slashes and overhead swipes will keep enemies frozen in their tracks. Close the distance and say farewell. G-Grip (Launch) SMGs (except PP-19), Assault Rifles, Battle Pass Page 7 Reward Vertical foregrip with integrated laser for improved firing stability, horizontal recoil control, and tightened spread when transitioning between hipfire and aiming down sights. Beam: Blue. Blocks Laser attachments. Stryder .22 3-Round Burst Mod (Launch) Stryder .22 Pistol, Event Reward Convert the Stryder .22 into a 3-round burst. Drastically improves fire rate and maintains manageable gun kick but alters the weapon’s damage profile outside of the effective range. SVD Full Auto Mod (In-Season) SVD Sniper Rifle, Event Reward Convert the SVD from semi-auto to full-auto functionality, ramping up the speed of your damage output and drastically improving recoil and handling. TR2 CQB Auto Conversion (In-Season) TR2 Marksman Rifle, Event Reward Alter the TR2 Marksman Rifle to fire handgun caliber rounds, resulting in a Marksman Rifle with a compact frame and fully automatic capabilities that rival fire rates of an SMG! Stitch Returns to Action in the Season 04 Battle Pass Stitch returns to the fray, leading this season’s Battle Pass content in a shocking team up with Adler. Purchase the Season 04 Battle Pass for 1,100 COD Points or the Season 04 Battle Pass Bundle for 2,400 COD Points to immediately unlock the Instant Rewards Page of the Battle Pass, including the following items: 10% Battle Pass XP Boost The new “Supermax” Stitch Operator and “Supermax BlackCell” Stitch Operator Skin for those who purchase BlackCell The “Lock Up” Legendary Blueprint for the Feng 82 LMG The “Try Me!” Emote The “Untamable” Large Decal Start to unlock up to 1,100 COD Points as you progress through the Battle Pass The Season 04 Battle Pass includes over 110 pieces of unlockable content (excluding BlackCell) including two new Base Weapons, the G-Grip Tactical Foregrip Attachment, and several unlockable mil-sim style skins for Bailey, Payne, Grey, Caine, Brutus, Toro, Adler, Nazir, and Marshall. Stay tuned for the BlackCell, Battle Pass and Store Bundles blog prior to Season 04 launch for more details. BlackCell Offerings When the job needs to get done, summon Omen, the otherworldly Operator leading BlackCell content in Season 04. The menacing Operator and his three-headed guard dog are joined by a cast of infected, black and purple-hued Operator Skins and Weapon Blueprints earned exclusively through BlackCell. BlackCell owners can access the Season 04 Battle Pass via the exclusive BlackCell Page, instantly unlocking the following items: The “Omen” BlackCell Operator and Skin 10% XP Boost 1,100 COD Points The “Guard Dog” Companion Finishing Move The “Hellblock” Mastercraft Blueprint for the Ladra SMG The “Kill Tally” Gun Screen The “BlackCell” Clan Tag (showcased in Lobbies and Winner’s Circles) BlackCell owners get access to page after page of additional exclusive rewards within the Season 04 Battle Pass, including: Seven BlackCell-exclusive skins for Stitch (two skins), Bailey, Payne, Caine, Brutus, and Adler.  Seven BlackCell-exclusive Weapon Blueprints for the Krig C (Assault Rifle), XMG (LMG), SWAT 5.56 (Marksman Rifle), ASG-98 (Shotgun), FFAR 1 (Assault Rifle), Model L (Assault Rifle), LC10 (SMG) Over 130 item rewards (Battle Pass and BlackCell related) for those who fully complete the Season 04 BlackCell Battle Pass. As usual, players who upgrade to BlackCell after purchasing the Battle Pass will also receive back the COD Points they spent. BlackCell Daily Challenges: Players with BlackCell will receive additional Daily Challenges throughout Season 04 for Multiplayer, Zombies, and Call of Duty: Warzone, giving even more chances to rake in the XP during your play sessions! BlackCell Loyalty Bonus: Players who purchased BlackCell in a previous Black Ops 6season and go on to purchase Season 04 BlackCell will earn a permanent 10% Player and Weapon XP Loyalty Bonus, up to 30% for players who purchased Season 01, Season 02, and Season 03 BlackCell! The return of Stitch signals a shift in the battles ahead, requiring new Operators to meet the demands of the intensifying conflict. Predict a swift demise for your opponents with Omen leading BlackCell, joined by Stitch at the head of the Battle Pass plus a special appearance by Eve Macarro from Ballerina. Omen (BlackCell, Crimson One, Launch) “Omen” Operator: BlackCell Instant Reward Page It’s time for lockdown. Omen is a presence who strikes fear even in the world’s most dangerous criminals, with an almost preternatural ability to keep even the most sinister prisoners in line. Stitch (Battle Pass, Rogue Black Ops, Launch) “Supermax” and “Yard Dog” Skins: Battle Pass Instant Reward Page, Battle Pass Completion Page Until recently, Stitch was assumed dead. Instead of eliminating his enemy, however, Adler sent him off to a black site prison. Now the time has come, and following a daring jailbreak, Stitch is once again free. Adler needs his help cracking the codenames that will finally lead to the Pantheon moles, but at what cost? Ballerina (Bundle, Crimson One, In-Season) Store Bundle Seeking revenge for her slain father, Eve Macarro embarks on a relentless mission against the High Table’s most feared opponents in Ballerina, the highly anticipated new action film from the World of John Wick. Deploy as the elite assassin in one of two looks in the Ballerina Bundle arriving in Season 04. Participate in a new round of scheduled Events across Multiplayer, Zombies, and Call of Duty: Warzone. Earn rewards like new weapons, special attachments, and more. Here’s a first look at the Events to come (with more announcements in the Season 04 Reloaded blog): Event: Ballerina (MP, ZM, WZ, In-Season) Activation Dates: June 5 to June 12 Total Rewards: 10 (+ One BlackCell reward) Enter the world of John Wick with the new Ballerina Event. Prove your capabilities as a supreme assassin by slaying your way across Multiplayer, Zombies, and Call of Duty: Warzone. Rewards include the new Essex Model 07 Marksman Rifle and a Ballerina-themed Nunchuck Melee Blueprint for BlackCell Owners. Event: Rivals (MP, ZM, WZ, In-Season) Activation Dates: June 12 to June 26 Total Rewards: 15 (+ One BlackCell reward) Enemies become allies in the Rivals Event, when Stitch brings his code-cracking expertise to help uncover the real names of the final Pantheon moles in the CIA. The goal is simple; prove you’re the most proficient Operator by earning XP across all game modes and unlock a plethora of impressive free items. Dominate your enemies to become the first to unlock rewards including the Stryder .22 3-Round Burst Mod (Attachment) and Grim Reaper (Scorestreak). Events: King of the Dead, Master of Grief (Zombies, Mid-Season) Activation Dates (King of the Dead): June 26 to July 3 Activation Dates (Master of Grief): July 10 to July 17 King of the Dead: “Eliminate zombies in any Zombie mode to earn points to climb the leaderboard.” Master of Grief: “Collect Essence in Grief to earn points to climb the leaderboard.” Earn points by slaying all types of undead! As you’d expect, you receive more points for dispatching the harder zombie types. This, in turn, causes you to climb the Zombies leaderboard, and once the Event is over, rewards will be granted based on your leaderboard position. Everyone receives some kind of reward, but to obtain the really good stuff, it’s time to perfect your Special and Elite Zombies slaying!  Season 04 brings new Bundles to the Store, including a special crossover event with Ballerina. Get more intel in the Season 04 BlackCell, Battle Pass, and Bundles blog arriving before launch. Tracer Pack: Ballerina Choose one of two Operator Skins for Eve, a red sequin dress as “Eve Macarro” or a sleek black professional fit as the “Ruska Rogue.” Bring light to the darkness with three Legendary Weapon Blueprints featuring High Table Coin Tracers and High Table Coin Death FX: the “Relevé” AK-74 Assault Rifle, “Plié” Saug SMG, and the “Arabesque” 9MM PM Pistol. For a snazzier elimination, take them out with the “Dance With Death” Finishing Move. Balance lethality and elegance with additional Ballerina themed content, including the “Pirouette” Emote, “Keepsake” Weapon Charm, animated “Caged Grace” Emblem, animated “Pas de Duex Calling Card, and the “Take a Bow” Loading Screen. Tracer Pack: Ink and Smoke Reactive Ultra Skin Add some class to your deployments with the cel-shaded, black and greyscale “Hardboiled” Ultra Operator Skin for Weaver, accompanied by the Reactive “Lethal Inspection” AMES 85 Assault Rifle and “Personal Detective” ASG-89 Shotgun Weapon Blueprints, both featuring Noir Tracers and Ink Annihilation Death FX. For a closer finish, leap for their throats using the “Wire Cut” Finishing Move. When taking on the undead, equip the “Search Engine” Wonder Weapon skin for the Thrustodyne M23 and show off your Zombies credentials with the “Sidepiece” Weapon Charm, “Dead Noir” Weapon Sticker, “Evidence” Spray, “Greyscale” Loading Screen, and the consumable Time Out GobbleGum. Other Incoming Bundles There’s plenty more awesome new content arriving in the Season 04 Store, including the “Tracer Pack: Olympus Bolt Mastercraft Ultra Skin” Bundle, featuring an electrifying Mastercraft Weapon Blueprint for the new LC10 SMG alongside a divine Ultra Operator Skin for Caine. Also incoming is the “Tracer Pack: System Breach” Bundle, and the “Tracer Pack: The Goat Ultra Skin” Bundle with a Goat Companion Finishing Move. See more of the season’s upcoming Bundles and more in the Season 04 BlackCell, Battle Pass, and Store Bundle blog. Call of Duty League, the pinnacle of competitive Call of Duty, is bringing its fourth and final Major of the season to the DreamHack Dallas show floor. Guests with a CDL add-on ticket can watch Major IV live, where the 12 Call of Duty League teams will battle it out for the final CDL points to qualify for 2025 Call of Duty League Championship in June. Ensure you get into the action by tuning in and watching Major IV live on YouTube. Be sure to link your YouTube account with your Activision ID Account to earn some special viewership rewards (shown above). Click here for more intel. The event starts at 10:300 AM PT Friday, May 23, and continuing at 10:30 AM PT Saturday May 24 with the Finals beginning at 10:30 AM PT Sunday May 25.  Black Ops 6 is available now, and now’s definitely the time to experience the spy action thriller Campaign, the in-depth tactical chaos of best-in-class Multiplayer, and to soak in the gory glory of an incredible round-based Zombies experience with five maps and the brand-new Grief mode! Click here to Purchase Black Ops 6. © 2025 Activision Publishing, Inc. ACTIVISION, CALL OF DUTY, CALL OF DUTY WARZONE, MODERN WARFARE, CALL OF DUTY LEAGUE, and CALL OF DUTY BLACK OPS are trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners. For more information, please visit www.callofduty.com and www.youtube.com/callofduty, and follow @Activision and @CallofDuty on X, Instagram, and Facebook. For Call of Duty Updates, follow @CODUpdates on X. ®, TM & © 2025 Lions Gate Entertainment Inc. and related companies. All Rights Reserved.

Russell Adler didn’t eliminate Vikhor “Stitch” Kuzmin after all, instead confining the villain to an Icelandic black site prison as insurance for a rainy day. That day has come as Adler and crew free their former foe, their only chance to finally crack the Pantheon codenames. Witness the return of Stitch in the massive Season 04 update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone, bringing new maps, modes, weapons, and more. Season 04 launches May 29 on PS5 and PS4. Play Video Multiplayer overview New Core 6v6 Maps Shutdown (Launch): Shut off the power to the prison with an attack on a hydroelectric dam in Iceland. Fight over the rugged terrain, dive into the lake, and battle around the damaged turbine. Fugitive (Launch): With the power cut, it’s time to break Stitch out of the black site prison. Infiltrate the frozen compound, climbing, ziplining, and battling over the grounds and in the cell block where alarms warn of the jailbreak. New 2v2/6v6 Strike Maps Blitz (Launch): Traffic comes to a halt as Pantheon agents race towards the prison but get ambushed by the Rogue team. Duck under the bridge for quick cover or trek the cliffside seeking enemy targets. Eclipse (Mid-Season): Stitch arrives in Avalon, slipping into an underground nightclub to discuss business. Battle in the neon lights down the halls and over the dance stage. Remaster, Core 6v6 Map Fringe (Mid-Season): Revisit Fringe, originally featured in Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and coming to Black Ops 6 reimagined as the grand opening of the Rolling Hills distillery. New Multiplayer Modes Team Elimination (Launch): This twist on Kill Confirmed gives both teams a limited number of lives each round. Eliminated players drop a dog tag on death that can be picked up by the enemy to confirm the kill and drain the opposing team’s remaining lives, or by a teammate to prevent the action. One in the Chamber (Launch Window): One pistol, one bullet, a knife, and three lives. Eliminate enemies to earn more bullets in this Black Ops classic. Party Ops (In-Season): Get the party started in a new Limited-Time Mode arriving later in the season dropping players into a randomized set of themed minigames. Now launching: The Grim Reaper Scorestreak: Grim Reaper (Event Reward): The quad-tube loaded Launcher returns from the original Black Ops, inflicting heavy explosive damage on enemy Operators and Scorestreaks alike.   Zombies overview Returning Mode: Grief (Launch) The fan-favorite competitive Zombies mode returns! This 4v4 indirect PvP mode pits S.A.M. against Director Richtofen as teams pledge their support for one or the other, receiving handler comms guiding them throughout the match. Secure Capture Zones to thwart the enemy with modifiers including reduced damage, drained ammo, slowed movements, and more.  Put your Zombies talents to the test in this mode while competing against real players attempting to survive longer than you and your squad.  New Ammo Mod, GobbleGums, Grim Reaper  Ammo Mod: Shatter Blast: Modify your ammo to explode on contact, dealing armor-piercing damage in a blast radius. Research Major and Minor Augments to specialize Shatter Blast’s abilities in all-new ways. Three New GobbleGums: Chew on Explosive Flourish to trigger an area-of-effect explosion around your Operator when reloading. Pop Flavor Hex to activate a random Ultra GobbleGum, and force eliminated zombies to belch sparkly rainbow bubbles via Rainburps. Grim Reaper: Build the new Support weapon at the Crafting Table and blast those zombies to bits! New Challenges and LTMs Expect an influx of Dark Ops Challenges awarding Calling Cards and bounteous amounts of XP for those able to complete the secret challenges. Play new Limited-Time Modes, including the Starting Room LTM and Abomination Challenge LTM later in the season. Call of Duty: Warzone Overview New Point of Interest: The Overlook Battle up and down The Overlook, a new skyscraper under construction in Downtown. Burger Town and the SKN Comm tower have been demolished to make way for the building. Two cranes flank the dominant POI and checkpoints line the entrances. Work your way from ground level including the relocated Burger Town up to the Penthouse and Roof, or latch onto an ascender and get some serious height. New Limited-Time Modes Clash (Launch): Two teams of 52 drop into a specific POI within Verdansk. With no Circle Collapse and instant access to your Loadouts, be the first team to earn 500 points by eliminating enemies, completing contracts, and participating in Public Events. Earn upgrades like the new Door Barricade Field Upgrade and the Hand Cannon, spend cash to activate SAM Turrets, and earn powerups that alter the course of the match. Havoc Royale (Mid-Season): Compete in a Resurgence mode where modifiers bend the rules in game-changing ways. Survive the havoc, be the last team standing, and claim victory! Resurgence Casual (Mid-Season): Drop into a Resurgence match mixing human players and bots. A great mode for warming up, teaching new players about the game, or just chilling out. Mid-Season Loadout Items  Care Package: Deploy this rare throwable to summon an aerial drop with the chance to obtain rare equipment, the Specialist Perk, and more. Perk: Loot Master: Available only in Resurgence and Plunder, gear up faster by increasing the amount of loot you find while opening caches, including an increased drop rate for equipped weapon ammo, Tacticals and Lethals, cash, Field Upgrades, Killstreaks, and other high-tier gear. General Overview New Weapons: In the Battle Pass, unlock two rapid fire weapons in the LC10 SMG and the FFAR 1 Assault Rifle. Earn more across multiple seasonal events including the lever-action Essex Model 07 Marksman Rifle, Olympia Special weapon, and the Pickaxe Melee weapon. New Attachments: Lock in with the G-Grip Tactical Foregrip available on most SMGs and Assault Rifles. Get three weapon conversions, including a burst conversion for the Stryder. 22 Pistol and full-auto conversions for the SVD Sniper Rifle and TR2 Marksman Rifle. Events & Ranked Play Earn additional rewards across several in-season events, including coveted items like the Essex Model 07 Marksman Rifle, Stryder .22 3-Round Burst Mod, and the Grim Reaper Scorestreak. Plus, compete in a new season of Ranked Play for Multiplayer and Call of Duty: Warzone, including Ranked Play: Battle Royale and, in Mid-Season, Ranked Play: Resurgence. Play using a competitive ruleset and earn new seasonal rewards based on the highest Rank obtained in the season. Season 04 Battle Pass & Store Content Purchase the Battle Pass to immediately unlock rewards including a seasonal 10% Battle Pass XP Boost, the new “Supermax” Stitch Operator Skin, and more, providing access to over 110 pieces of unlockable content. Plus, earn up to 1,100 COD Points as you progress through the Battle Pass Pages. Get even more with BlackCell. Look for exciting new Store Bundles including the cel-shaded Tracer Pack: Ink and Smoke plus the Tracer Pack: System Breach, Tracer Pack: Olympus Bolt, and much more. Season 04 launches May 29 Black Ops 6 is available now on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. Experience the spy action thriller Campaign, the in-depth tactical chaos of Multiplayer, and soak in the gory glory of round-based Zombies.

May 20, 20253 min readIs Your Tech Listening? Apple Settles Claim for Siri EavesdroppingApple is paying $95 million over claims that Siri secretly recorded private chats and fed targeted adsBy Deni Ellis Béchard edited by Dean Visser Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesSex, drug deals and doctor visits: according to allegations, Apple’s Siri eavesdropped on these and much more—on people’s iPhones, HomePods and Apple Watches—and used the content to target advertisements on users’ devices. Despite having denied selling our pillow talk to marketers, Apple just cut a $95-million check to settle a lawsuit in which plaintiffs reported eerie coincidences: discussing Air Jordan sneakers and immediately seeing ads for them; mentioning Olive Garden only to be served pasta commercials; talking privately with a doctor about a surgical procedure before seeing a promo for that very treatment. In early May the settlement administrator opened a claims website, allowing U.S. owners of every Siri-enabled gadget bought between September 2014 and December 2024 (essentially the lifespan of “Hey, Siri”) to request a payout of up to 20 bucks per affected device—enough for a drink and a wary glance at your phone.The lawsuit, Lopez v. Apple, dates back to July 2019, when the Guardian published the allegations of an anonymous whistleblower—an Apple subcontractor whose job was to listen to Siri recordings to determine if the voice-activated assistant was being correctly triggered. The whistleblower claimed that accidental Siri activations routinely captured sensitive audio. Despite Apple’s promises that Siri listens only when invited, background noises (often just the sound of a zipper, according to the whistleblower) could switch it on. The contractor said user location and contact information accompanied recordings.Apple had never explicitly told users that humans might review their Siri requests, and within a week of the Guardian report, the company halted the program. The first Lopez v. Apple complaint was filed in August 2019, and two weeks later Apple issued a public apology in which it promised to make human review opt-in-only and to stop retaining audio by default. That apology was framed to allay customer concerns—not as an admission of wrongdoing. Apple denied all allegations in the lawsuit, which is common in class-action settlements in U.S. courts.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.If the situation sounds familiar, your memory works. In 2018 Amazon’s Alexa recorded a married couple’s conversation about hardwood floors and sent it to one of the husband’s employees. Amazon blamed an unlikely chain of misheard cues—basically, it came down to Alexa butt-dialing someone with living room chatter. The following year Bloomberg reported that Amazon had thousands of workers transcribing clips to fine-tune the assistant. Later Google faced similar allegations. The pattern was clear: robots needed to be trained to make sure that they were hearing voice commands correctly, and this training needed to come from humans who, in the process, inevitably heard things they shouldn’t via consumer gadgets. Even TVs were implicated: in 2015 Samsung warned owners not to discuss secrets near its smart sets because voice commands were sent to unnamed third parties, a disclaimer that could have been written by George Orwell.This isn’t tin-foil-hat territory. A 2019 survey found that 55 percent of Americans believe their phones listen to them to collect data for targeted ads, and a 2023 poll pushed the number north of 60 percent. In the U.K., a 2021 poll found two thirds of adults had noticed an ad that they felt was tied to a recent real-life chat. But psychologists say this perception of “conversation-related ad creep” often relies on a feedback loop driven by confirmation bias: we ignore the thousands of ads that form a constant backdrop to our lives but build a campfire legend from the one time we mentioned “fire,” and an app tried to sell us tiki torches. The result is a low-grade cultural fear, with people placing masking tape on device mics and TikTokers begging Siri to stop stalking them. Knowing how ravenous tech companies are for data, people can hardly be blamed for this attitude.As for Apple, which once put “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone” on a Las Vegas billboard, the settlement doesn’t force it to admit fault—but lands a dent in its titanium halo: If the Cupertino, Calif.–based company can’t keep a lid on hot-mic moments, who can?(Asked for comment by Scientific American, Apple shared information on the settlement and emphasized its commitment to privacy. And Amazon reiterated its commitment to privacy, writing, “Access to internal services is highly controlled, and is only granted to a limited number of employees who require these services to train and improve the service.” Samsung and Google had not responded to requests for comment by the time of publication.)

Sadiq Khan is considering allowing new towns of more than 10,000 homes to be built on London’s green belt, the mayor’s office has confirmed. Planned communities such as Stevenage and Milton Keynes formed a major part of new housing delivery after World War II, and the current Labour government has revived the concept as part of its plans to ramp up housebuilding in the UK. Source: Daniel Gayne The government’s New Towns Taskforce is currently examining almost 100 proposals for new towns and will recommend locations to ministers in July. London’s mayor announced his own radical plans to boost housebuilding in the city last Friday, including a major review of the capital’s green belt, which could see large swathes of land opened up for development. Khan’s speech came alongside the publication of a consultation document, which gives the first indications of what the next London Plan might look like. “Opportunities for large-scale development (10,000+ homes in each location) in London’s green belt are being considered in areas with good public transport access (or where this could feasibly be delivered),” it said. The document said there is ”significant potential with the government’s New Towns Taskforce”, which it said the Greater London Authority would be engaging with. However, it said that ”any new homes delivered would need to count towards, not be additional to, meeting London’s nationally-established housing need of 88,000 homes per year”. The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government’s current position is that new towns housing numbers would not count towards meeting the assessed housing need of the area in which they are built.  A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: “We are doing all we can in London to help deliver the homes that are so desperately needed. “The Mayor wants to work with the UK Government and New Towns Taskforce to make sure that any work on new towns goes hand in hand with the development of his next London Plan to deliver high quality and affordable homes.” >> See also: ‘I make it a virtue that I’ve changed my mind’: Sadiq Khan makes a show of green belt housing U-turn, but where might the new homes actually be built? As well as mooting possible new towns in London’s green belt, the consultation document also alludes to using the capital’s designated ‘Opportunity Areas’ as potential new town sites. “We will also explore whether and how the government’s New Towns Taskforce work might apply within London’s current urban area to certain OAs of significant scale,” it said. Opportunity Areas, many of which are in more central parts of the city, are locations identified in the London Plan as having major potential for new homes, jobs and infrastructure. A report by Business LDN late last year said at least one new town should be built in the capital in order to address housing need. The report, developed with consultants, architects and planners, including Arup and DP9, said the capital’s unique political structures made it relatively easy to launch new towns, with strategic plan-making through the London Plan, and a mayor with the power to establish development corporations and responsibility for much of the city’s transit system. It did not pinpoint exact locations for a new town in London, but noted that 60% of London’s green belt was within 2km of an existing rail or tube station and that a number of those locations overlapped with existing ‘Opportunity Areas’, earmarked in the London plan as apt for new homes and infrastructure. Jonathan Seager, policy delivery director at BusinessLDN, said at the time: “If the Government wants to move fast on new towns, London has the connectivity, demand and political set-up needed to get spades in the ground swiftly. ”The city is uniquely placed to house multiple types of these developments as part of the drive by Ministers to hit ambitious housing and growth targets.  ”Building one or more new towns in the capital should be a no-brainer for both economic and social reasons.” Earlier this week (13 May), the House of Lords built environment committee heard evidence in its inquiry into the practical delivery of new towns. John Sturzaker, Ebenezer Howard chair of planning at the University of Hertfordshire, told the committee that public acceptance of the new towns would be heavily influenced by how well important infrastructure requirements are realised in advance. Source: ShutterstockNew towns brought forward by the government may be significantly smaller than post-war developments like Milton Keynes (pictured) ”I think it’s really important that the infrastructure to support these communities is going in before, or at the very least, at the same time as new housing, whether that’s a village hall, whether it’s schools, whether it’s shops, so that you don’t have people living a sort of pioneer lifestyle,” he said “We need to have an infrastructure first approach, which common in other parts of Europe”. The professor also noted that the government’s definition of new towns would include much smaller developments than the post-war new towns. ”10,000 is not very big in terms of a new town. if you wanted a standalone new town like the traditional ones you might be looking at 10 or 20 times that,” he said, suggesting that the government was more likely to be looking at urban extensions or networks of smaller new towns. Speaking to Housing Today’s sister title Building, he elaborated on his comments to the committee and addressed how the government could approach new town development within the M25. “The traditional model of new towns that we’re familiar with in this country, places like Hatfield or Stevenage or Milton Keynes, would be too big to be within Greater London,” he said. He referenced Chapelton in Aberdeenshire and Chelmsford Garden Community in Essex as examples of new towns of a smaller scale. He said he wasn’t aware of any suitable sites in London but said he had “no doubt there will be some”.