Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 players are protesting a controversial change made to the game’s campaign by Treyarch. Whether it is Call of Duty: Warzone, or traditional Call of Duty multiplayer, the online elements of COD have dominated their offline counterparts in terms of attention for years. Whether it is zombies or the campaign, the single-player, offline parts of Call of Duty are only a fraction of the overall experience. And even these are losing their offline elements.
In the past, Call of Duty campaigns could be played offline. As long as you had the game on disc, you could put in the console and start playing the campaign without ever connecting to Internet. Over time, this has transformed to playable offline campaigns that require an online check to download and start the campaign. And now, with Black Ops 6, players are going to need to be connected to the Internet the entire time they play the campaign.
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Those with a poor Internet connection, or not a regular Internet connection, are out of luck. There will be no playing the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign for you. This is different than even the most recent COD campaign, Modern Warfare 3, which required an online connection at points but not for the entirety of the campaign.
According to Treyarch, the Black Ops 6 campaign is set to require a constant online connection to deliver the highest-quality visuals. In other words, they have offloaded various texture streaming.
“To deliver the highest-quality visuals while also reducing the game’s overall storage space on your hard drive, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will use texture streaming across all game modes. This means you’ll need a continuous internet connection to play any game mode, including Campaign.”
Of course, this is not something the game needs, but is a deliberate design decision from Treyarch, who has prioritized keeping the game’s file size smaller. For those that don’t know, textures take up a ton of space. That said, this justification is not proving sufficient for some Call of Duty fans, who claim they are not buying the game now.
“Going backwards as always,” writes one fan. “Remember when you bought a game and could just play it and everything was available to earn instead of buy,” writes a second fan.
Of course, for some this is a great change. If Internet connection is a not concern, or if you don’t play the campaign, then you’re getting a smaller file size for no hassle. However, this will prevent some players from playing the campaign. Unfortunately, while this is new for the series, it will likely be the standard going forward.