Key Highlights:
- Call of Duty Black ops 7 goes free to play next week, but will return to being full priced afterward.
- The free to play period will also have a Double XP weekend active.
- The timing is suspect, and makes you wonder whether Activision finally caved in to player demand.
Call of Duty Black Ops 7 was released on November 14, 2025 to much fanfare, but things appear to have reached a record low for Activision, as the game is already being planned to be partially free to try, albeit temporarily.
With that in mind, here is all you need to know about Black Ops 7’s free trial week and of how this affects Activision’s future plans below.
Black Ops 7 Goes Free To Play A Month After Its Release
A message from the Call of Duty Team.
— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) December 9, 2025
🔗: https://t.co/AnEpsY6fRE pic.twitter.com/sHVg9BsSKP
In a rather interesting blog post from the official Call of Duty webpage, the team announced that they were making Black Ops 7 entirely free to play for the coming week. Both the Black Ops 7 multiplayer mode and zombies campaign will be available to try out in this weekend.
There doesn’t seem to be any mention of the single player campaign though, which is probably for the best (given its awkward nature).
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The game will be free to access for only a week, and the team hopes to earn back the trust of its player base, attracting more newcomers in the process.
In order to incentivize players, the Call of Duty team will also be offering a Double XP weekend for all players during the trial period.
It’s an intriguing move for sure, and makes you wonder whether Call of Duty finally gave in to player demand, and are now reconsidering their priorities. Black Ops 7 was universally panned by players, and Activision might finally be looking to put in some effort to reinvigorate the franchise.
It’s also a pretty smart way to base your decisions on player feedback, and is a good move overall. Hopefully the feedback taken into account remains sensible, and respects the player’s opinions as well.
Call of Duty Is Slowing Down Its Release Schedule
The more interesting revelation came from the footnotes of the free trial for Black Ops 7. Mentioning that their ‘strategy was changing’, the team shared their plans for the future of the franchise.
Acknowledging the (mostly negative) feedback from fans over the past few months, the team admitted that they have not met the standards set by players for Call of Duty as a whole. Curiously enough, the team maintains that Black Ops 7 has met their expectations as a spiritual successor to the critically acclaimed Black Ops 2.
Going back to the shift in strategy, it would appear that the team is going back to not doing yearly, back to back releases for Black Ops and Modern Warfare games. The message didn’t clearly attribute the reasons behind the decision, but it appears to be related to maintaining the quality of future releases at a certain acceptable level.
The post also mentions striving meaningful innovation per title, instead of being incremental. In other words, Call of Duty will now be abandoning yearly releases, and going back to the drawing board.
This should Hopefully give the team a much needed break to recalibrate and rethink their priorities. This was long overdue, and Call of Duty as a franchise has been stagnating slowly for years.
Black Ops 7 was a disaster, and it took this to wake Activision back to its senses. Hopefully, the next game the team cooks up will be a lot more appealing, and of high quality.
