If you’ve been on the fence about trying out Call of Duty Black Ops 4’s battle royale mode, we’ve got some good news for you. Activision has announced that Blackout will be free to play from January 17 to January 24.
This is definitely cause to celebrate for both newcomers and seasoned veterans of the mode alike. The former get to try out a great battle royale experience, and the latter… well, the latter get some easy kills while the newcomers work out what they’re doing.
The trial will be available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, but it’ll only be for the battle royale mode. If you fancy seeing the rest of what Call of Duty Black Ops 4 has to offer, you’ll have to cough up your hard earned dolla, son.
This announcement comes suspiciously hot on the heels of industry analyst Michael Pachter’s prediction that Activision would make Overwatch and Blackout free to play in 2019 in an attempt to bring in some of the Fortnite market.
It’s possible that this free Blackout trial could be Activision testing the waters to see whether or not a free to play battle royale mode could work on a permanent basis. Then again, it really could just be a one off free trial.
Still, given the fact that Valve’s own CS:GO recently adopted a free to play model, and even introduced a brand new battle royale mode. It’s safe to say that Fortnite’s influence remains strong in the industry. I certainly wouldn’t count out the possibility of a permanently free to play Blackout somewhere down the line.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.