- For other uses, see Call of Duty (disambiguation) and Headquarters.
Call of Duty HQ, often shortened to COD HQ and stylized as simply Call of Duty, is a game launcher designed by Infinity Ward that was released on October 28th, 2022. It serves as a centralized launcher for every Call of Duty game since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, including Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0.
On July 29th, 2025, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III became standalone titles, and were removed from the launcher.[1]
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty: Vanguard can also be launched from Call of Duty HQ but were never part of the launcher itself.
Overview[]
The creation of a centralized launcher for all Call of Duty games post Modern Warfare made a substantial change upon how Call of Duty games are acquired and managed. When a player acquires a Call of Duty game for either console or PC, it becomes registered as a "DLC" within COD HQ. Each game is then often compartmentalized into 3 sections: Campaign, Multiplayer (includes Zombies) and Co-op; this allows the player to choose which parts of each game they want to install, e.g. if they only want Black Ops 6 's campaign, Modern Warfare III 's multiplayer and Warzone 2.0 installed in their Console or PC, they can opt to do so.
Upon launch, the COD HQ app presented the player with a main hub that is comprised of three areas: HQ, Battle Pass and Store.
- In HQ, the player is shown the trending playlists and game modes from the current Call of Duty entry, as well as other game modes from previous Call of Duty entries. They are able to launch the playlist directly and play it, though the app will close and open a different launcher if the player chooses to play an older title.
- In Battle Pass, the player is presented the Battle Pass content for the current season.
- In Store, all the bundles as well as weapon and operator skins from current and past Call of Duty titles are put for sale in exchange for CODPoints.
In terms of navigation through the UI, COD HQ was very similar in style to other popular streaming apps at the time (e.g. Hulu and Netflix), in which each section of COD HQ would fill the player's screen, and the top section was where the most recent Call of Duty title was presented; as they scrolled down the app, they would be presented with other Call of Duty titles and their trending game modes and playlists, until they reached the bottom of the app's UI, which was where the "Legacy Games" section was located.
On August 2nd, 2023, the Modern Warfare II launcher—which up to that point had served as the de facto Call of Duty HQ launcher for its own title and Warzone 2.0—was rebranded as simply "Call of Duty", to accommodate both titles and future ones.
On October 21st, 2024, the COD HQ was redesigned to have a more "streamlined" experience. The "Battle Pass" area was replaced with the "All Games" area, where players could have a full view of all Call of Duty titles (post-2019) and launch them from there, and the HQ area was significantly reduced in terms of visual clutter - serving solely as a launching point to different Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 game modes and its respective main menu.
Development[]
Before the Call of Duty HQ was created, every Call of Duty game was released as its own standalone game from which players could launch from the platform they had bought it on. However, since Call of Duty: Warzone could only be launched through Modern Warfare, this forced the development studios to work on porting all assets from Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard to Modern Warfare, increasing the size of the game significantly but also causing significant issues and bugs.
On June 8th, 2022, Activision announced every game starting with Modern Warfare II will be developed using a unified engine built upon the IW engine built from Modern Warfare II, allowing the studios to share assets and technologies to create a streamlined experience through the Call of Duty HQ launcher.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is called "Modern Warfare I" when seen from the "Last Played" tile on the main screen.