Infinity Ward has released the first major update to the Modern Warfare 4 beta, addressing feedback from the beta's opening day. According to the developer's patch notes, the update reduces the volume and audible distance of enemy footstep and gear audio, following widespread player complaints about footstep sound. The studio said its goal is for movement audio to indicate an approaching enemy without revealing their exact position from a distance, and added that it will keep monitoring feedback on the topic.
Time-to-kill was also adjusted, with the ISO Nightshade SMG and Oris 8.6 marksman rifle both having their damage ranges and headshot multipliers reduced. Infinity Ward described these as the first in a series of planned lethality tweaks as it continues reviewing community feedback and gameplay data. The Frangible Rounds attachment also had its slow effect duration and magnitude reduced.
New content arrived alongside the balance changes: a map called Cachette and a mode called Inflation, in which players collect cash by eliminating enemies and defeating HVT operators, with the richest players becoming marked targets for others to hunt. Cachette's addition brought the map pool to four, which Infinity Ward said was the threshold needed to properly enable map voting, a feature turned on with this update. Transit 213 also received visibility adjustments, including brightened shadowed areas and a revised color balance.
The update included numerous bug fixes, covering issues with the Mobility Course, incorrect wet-surface footstep sounds on dry ground, controller reconnection errors, and a rare disconnect issue in Gunfight 10v10, among others. Some problems remain unresolved: join-in-progress is still temporarily disabled on the Kill Block map due to a bug in round transitions, and cooking certain lethal equipment can still cause an FPS drop, both of which Infinity Ward says it's continuing to investigate. On PC, the studio is also working to improve the Secure Attestation Wizard, a tool for diagnosing and fixing beta access issues, following an earlier fix this week for a common "Compiling Shaders" stutter.
This early access beta phase, available to those who pre-ordered, runs until August 25, ahead of a separate open beta weekend from August 28 to September 1 that will be free for everyone. PC players will need TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot enabled to participate. The beta launched after Call of Duty: Next, the showcase event where many of its maps and modes were first revealed, and this marks Infinity Ward's first Call of Duty release since 2022; this year's beta also includes a campaign mission.
Modern Warfare 4's beta weekend coincided with a separate beta for Wardogs, a 100-player milsim shooter from developer Bulkhead that has surpassed one million wishlists. Both games ranked as the top two sellers on Steam, with Call of Duty in the top spot. Wardogs' beta ran from August 21 to August 24 and is built around a short time-to-kill, lethal headshots, individual bullet reloading, and large maps requiring player pilots to transport soldiers, while still including accessibility features like a killcam. The $40 pre-order is refundable, and developer Bulkhead was reported to be dealing with server issues after turnout exceeded 87,000 players, higher than expected.