Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 devs may tone down annoying crossover skins following backlash, but launch will still be infested with old, ugly characters

The official reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 looked rather promising during yesterday’s Gamescom Opening Night Live presentation. With a mind-bending campaign and a glorious zombies overhaul, the annual shooter series looks like it will be another great experience on launch.

However, with Call of Duty’s post-launch skins adding Nicki Minaj, Homelander, Beevis and Butthead and even American Dad, the King of FPS multiplayer has thoroughly abandoned its military identity for the sake of micro-transaction mullah. But will this ever change?

Will Black Ops 7 tone down skins?

Following Battlefield 6’s recent shutdown of cringeworthy cartoon crossover skins, it seems that Call of Duty may be toning down its future crossovers in response to heavy backlash against the increasing number of tone-deaf skins.

Speaking to IGN ahead of the official Black Ops 7 reveal, Treyarch associate creative director Miles Leslie explained that Treyarch has “thought about this” for the upcoming game. While crossovers are definitely still happening, the team promises to “calibrate” their intensity to reach “the widest audience” possible.

“We always try to make sure that we are trying to touch the widest audience,” Lesie told the outlet. “I’ve had the pleasure of working on Call of Duty now for almost 20 years, and we’re constantly looking at ways to push into different audiences and fans, and that’s what you saw with that; there are fans that really love it. Obviously, there are fans who those may not be their favorite. We’re going to try to calibrate that as we move forward, and we take that feedback seriously. But again, we are trying to make sure that all fans feel represented in the game and figuring out that tight balance is something we’re paying attention to.”

The non-specific response definitely means that crossovers are still 100% part of the post-launch support for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. However, we may see less egregious, less immersion-shattering additions to the series for this entry. Unfortunately, there’s one huge issue.

Just like Black Ops 6 before it, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is bringing forward every cosmetic from the previous game. This means that the last year of ugly skins—including the aforementioned Beevis and Butthead and American Dad skins—are part of the game on launch.

This was one of my biggest issues with Modern Warfare 3. Despite being a brand-new game, my launch experience was already tainted by Nicki Minaj and Homelander sprinting around the place. Unfortunately, Black Ops 7 will be the exact same, but with even worse skins. Maybe they could add an option so I could only see base skins—Halo: The Master Chief Collection has this very same option—but knowing CoD, they definitely won’t do that.