It looks like Call of Duty publisher Activision is going to reintroduce the first-person shooter series’ 16-year-old red dot mini-map, which developer Infinity Ward controversially removed for the 2022 game Modern Warfare II, in the upcoming Modern Warfare III. Earlier this month, developer Sledgehammer Games suggested that slide canceling (a sprint combo that makes a player much quicker and more slippery) would also return to the MWIII, too, so hardcore players can once again sleep peacefully at night.
CoD news and leaks site Charlie Intel posted a screenshot of an anonymous, presumably, insider confirming red dots’ presence in MWIII to Twitter on August 14. Originally, the mini-map turned actively shooting players (particularly, those who weren’t using Silencers or sneaky subsonic rounds) into red dots, making it easier for opponents to hunt them down and shoot them in the face. In 2022, Infinity Ward said it wanted to remove this feature so as to not “punish players for firing their weapons” in a community update blog.
“We also want players to actively search out the origin of a gunshot versus just traveling directly to where the dot is on the mini-map,” it continued. Despite player outcry, Infinity Ward kept the classic minimap out of MW2 until it released a Gun Game mode in February.
That decision, along with Infinity Ward’s throwing away slide canceling, made some players accuse the CoD developer of—gasp!—appealing to casuals.
“[It’s] clear that [Infinity Ward believes] casual players enjoying the game is more important than the hardcore player experience,” Charlie Intel sulked last year on Twitter.
But what about now? As Sledgehammer is, apparently, choosing to overturn two of MW2’s most contentious departures from CoD tradition? Fuck the casuals, I guess.
“Red dots on the mini map for unsuppressed weapon fire should’ve never been removed,” Charlie Intel said on Twitter on August 14. “The only studio that did remove it was Infinity Ward.”
Kotaku reached out to Sledgehammer Games for comment. Modern Warfare III releases on November 10, though an August 17 “worldwide reveal” should give players more information about it before then.