You might want to wait a bit to play Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on Steam

By Carli Velocci Published October 25, 2024

A player runs in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer. — Activision

It’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launch day, which means potentially millions of players are hopping into the new single-player campaign, the updated multiplayer mode, and Zombies. While posts online about the performance of the game seem to be minimal, there have been reported issues on PC, specifically via Steam.

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It’s been a common story lately about players being mad at third-party launchers on Steam, and that remains the case for Black Ops 6. Call of Duty’s is called Call of Duty HQ (COD HQ), and it’s a hub for players to manage their game installs, whether they want to only download certain game modes or launch a specific game. It seems as if players can only switch between modes through the launcher and have to go through multiple menus to boot the game up. In the worst cases, they can’t launch the game at all.

“The COD HQ is the worst thing to ever happen to cod. I don’t want to navigate 10 menus to get to the single thing I want to see,” said one Redditor, who also mentioned that it’s “constantly just bugging out.” Multiple people in this thread say the the HQ crashes at launch.

Vault Edition owners on Steam are also having an issue where they can’t equip the Woods Operate Pack. The team is currently working on a fix.

Still, Black Ops 6 is currently sitting on Steam at a “Mostly Positive” rating. It’s likely you won’t run into any problems, but if you wanted to immediately hop in and play, you might have to wait a bit longer.

Beyond those issues, Black Ops 6 is still shaping up to be another uber-successful Call of Duty release. Analysts told GamesIndustry.biz that while the game coming to Xbox Game Pass will reduce overall sales, it could bring 2.5 million to 4 million new subscribers to the service.

Former Contributor, Games

Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…

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Gaming

Game spending is up — and you can thank Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

A soldier shooting a beamshamsher in Black Ops 6.

Most of us knew that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 would be one of the biggest games of the year, but it's so big that it's doing a lot to boost games sales across the U.S.

This information comes from Circana (formerly NPD Group), which publishes a monthly report on U.S. video game spending. According to analyst Mat Piscatella, spending on hardware, software, and accessories was up 10% in October compared to the same time last year, and the spike was "primarily" driven by the release of Black Ops 6. Non-mobile video game subscription service spending was also up by 16%.

Gaming

The fastest ways to gain XP in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Kill Order gameplay in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

Ever since Modern Warfare, Call of Duty fans have been obsessed with finding every tip and trick they can to level up faster. Now that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has arrived with a refreshed Prestige system, the drive to grind levels is again at an all-time high. While everything you do does earn you XP, they are not all created equal. Just like picking your Wildcards or Perks, earning XP as fast as possible takes a bit of thought and planning. If there's a piece of equipment you have your eye on at a high level, or just want to grind through some Prestige ranks as fast as possible, here are the fastest ways to grind XP in Black Ops 6.
Do your dailies

We'll get the most obvious tip out of the way first. Daily challenges are back and work just as they always have. Every 24 hours you will be given a handful of small optional tasks to complete for a heap of bonus XP. These can be things like getting Scorestreak kills, getting Point Blank Kills, and getting kills with a specific weapon type. Most daily challenges are worth 2,500 XP, which is already a nice bonus, but there is also a fourth one that can be worth between 3,000 and 5,000 additional XP. Each day you log on, you should prioritize your daily challenges.
Tailor your loadout and play the objective

Gaming

Xbox Game Pass is getting tons of new games following Black Ops 6 success

A cockpit view in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

We know a lot of you are playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on Xbox right now, but the company just announced some games coming to Xbox Game Pass -- specifically the Game Pass Standard tier -- in the first half of November.

The biggest game coming to the service (and we mean that literally) is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Xbox and developers Asobo Studio previously reported that it will have a smaller install size than its predecessor -- 127GB versus 157GB -- but it'll also require 64GB of RAM. All of this is to help stream immense detail to the player as they fly around the world. Asobo says helped it to increase "the detail of its virtual environment by a factor of 4,000." Alongside the hyperrealistic graphics is a new career mode where you go through training and missions to become a pilot and a challenge mode where you compete against other pilots. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is coming to Game Pass at launch on November 19.