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.

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.

Recommended Videos

“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.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming

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.

Topics

Contributor, Games

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

Gaming

The best Call of Duty games, ranked

Soldier holding weapon in Modern Warfare II.

Few video game series are as influential and popular as Call of Duty. The annualized franchise throws players into fast-paced battles across various historical time periods -- along with fictional eras as well. Call of Duty has taken us to World War II, the Cold War, a modern setting, and even to the future.

Although it's one of the most successful video game franchises out there, Call of Duty's quality varies significantly from game to game, with some fantastic entries in the series, but many mediocre ones as well. But which Call of Duty games are worth your time and which ones should you skip? To answer that question, we've ranked all the mainline entries in the series, with details about why you should or shouldn't play a particular game.

Gaming

Is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on Game Pass?

A soldier crouching with his eyes blacked out.

When Microsoft announced that it was acquiring Activision, the big question on everyone's mind was what would happen with Call of Duty. Well, it took months of legal battles, but the deal finally went through and the first CoD game to release officially under Microsoft is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Xbox has held firm to its commitment to put all of its first-party titles onto Game Pass on day one for all its subscribers, but is it honoring that deal for the biggest game of the year? We know it isn't an Xbox exclusive and is still cross-platform, after all. If you have an Xbox and a subscription to Game Pass, you might not need to spend any money on Black Ops 6, but only if you meet one specific requirement.
Is Black Ops 6 on Game Pass?

The short answer is yes, Black Ops 6 is on Game Pass, but not at every tier. Prior to Black Ops 6 launching, Xbox restructured its Game Pass tiers a bit with new pricing and benefits. What you need to know is that you now need to either be a PC Game Pass or Game Pass Ultimate subscriber to get access to any first-party day-one titles.

Gaming

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6: tips and tricks to dominate the competition

Soldiers fight in a shopping plaza in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

In most Call of Duty games, you can rely on your aim and reflexes to get you pretty far in multiplayer, but Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will ask a lot more of you if you want to outplay the competition. Getting the feel for new weapons won't take you long, but there's a lot more you need to wrap your head around in this entry, from the completely revamped movement systems and perks to new game modes and scorestreaks.

Black Ops 6 proves that we're long past the days of this series being a simple shooter. While the campaign is great fun for a while, and Zombies has a lot to sink your teeth into as well, it is the competitive multiplayer mode that most of us spend the most time with. This is the biggest Call of Duty has been in years, so the competition has never been fiercer. If you want that edge on the battlefield, these tips and tricks will give it to you.
Master the movement