Another Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 leak has happened, thanks to a marketing tie-in with another consumer product.
As shared by CharlieIntel, a Little Caesars promotion revealed the launch date too early. This is the text in the email that Little Caesars sent out to winners of their promotion:
"Congratulations!
You have unlocked 15 minutes of Dual 2XP + a Battle Pass through the LITTLE CAEASARS X CALL OF DUTY promotion!
Your Dual 2XP will be delivered to your Activision account on October 25. The Battle Pass will be delivered to your Activision account at the start of Season 1 of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on November 14."
For those who don't remember, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6' logo and real name also leaked ahead of the official announcement because of marketing . Now, we aren't really the right people to be criticizing Microsoft Gaming and/or Activision for failing to coordinate this properly. But Activision and Microsoft have only themselves to blame for these avoidable leaks.
But then again, even before they were acquired by Microsoft, Activision has a somewhat lax policy when it comes to Call of Duty leaks. That seems to be because Activision has seen the franchise's enduring popularity.
That popularity has gotten the game and its developers through years of bad games and botched releases. A lot of the time, developers end up confirming what fans and dataminers leaked early anyway.
Activision and the Call of Duty developers may have decided that these leaks ultimately don't matter. Call of Duty endure year after year because Activision has successfully built a Call of Duty community. And because of the social ties in that community, the players keep buying these games year after year. It's where they play together with friends, and it's a formula Activision stumbled into years before Epic Games' Fortnite.
With Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 releasing at the end of this week, on October 25, 2024, its reasonable to believe that Season 1 would start in the middle of November. That would give players sufficient time to play through the story campaign, and/or get used to this Call of Duty's online modes, maps, and everything else that Activision is offering on launch.
Expectations are high that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will be the largest release in the franchise's history. Activision and Microsoft have a lot riding on its success. So much so, it seems, that they aren't even properly coordinating their efforts with their marketing partners. But we'll see just how well Microsoft's first salvo in selling gamers to Call of Duty will work.