Activision Blizzard announced plans for the Call of Duty League to return on Friday, April 10, after getting derailed by the coronavirus, officially named COVID-19. The developer also detailed how the rest of the season will run without matches taking place in arenas locally.
As with previous events, matches will stream on Call of Duty League’s official YouTube channel. Envy Gaming’s Dallas Empire will host this weekend’s competition, which will span three days with a group stage on Friday. Saturday will see teams advance to the knockout stage of competitive play and the bracket will reach the semifinals. The tournament will conclude on Sunday, April 12, with championship matches as teams compete to become the inaugural Call of Duty League Champion.
“I spent many years at the NFL, and saw firsthand how sports can lift the human spirit,” league commissioner Johanna Faries said. “No one wants to be in this situation, but we are, and we’re thankful that Call of Duty League can forge ahead and deliver live competition to fans when it’s probably needed most.”
The Call of Duty League launched earlier this year and features 12 city-based teams. After a successful launch weekend, the league put on three events in London, Atlanta, and Los Angeles before temporarily suspending operations due to the pandemic. The Chicago Huntsmen will host the next online event on April 24-26, and Florida Mutineers (May 8-10) and the Seattle Surge (May 22-24) will host next. In June, the Minnesota Rokkr (June 5-7) and Paris Legion (June 19-21) will take over, and the regular season ends in July after events hosted by the New York Subliners (July 10-12), London Royal Ravens (July 17-19), and the Toronto Ultra (July 24-26).
So far this season, the Atlanta Faze and Chicago Huntsmen are tied with 90 points. The Dallas Empire (80) and Minnesota Rokkr (70) trail behind in the championship bracket, and wildcards Paris Legion (50), Florida Mutineers (50), London Royal Ravens (40), and OpTic Gaming Los Angeles (20) follow. Teams looking to improve into a wild card spot include the Seattle Surge (20), Toronto Ultra (10), Los Angeles Guerrillas (10), and New York Subliners (10).
Competitive Call of Duty play previously fell under the now-defunct Call of Duty World League. The former series was shut down after the 2019 season in favor of the current Call of Duty League, which looks to replicate Activision Blizzard’s success with Overwatch League.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.