Game Engine

The Game Engine is what controls many aspects of the game such as physics and graphics.

id Tech 3 Engine

The id Tech 3 Engine by Id Software is the first engine used by the series. Both the IW Engine and Treyarch NGL are based on it.

• Call of Duty (2003)
• Call of Duty: United Offensive (2004)
• Call of Duty: Classic (2009)

IW Engine

Original

The IW Engine was developed by Infinity Ward for Call of Duty 2 and was based on Id Tech 3. It's the game engine powering most of the Call of Duty series.

It is used by many games, including:

• Call of Duty 2 (2005) - IW 2.0
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) IW 3.0
• Call of Duty: World at War (2008) - IW 3.0 (Modified)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) - IW 4.0
• Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) - IW 3.0 (Heavily Modified)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) - MW3 engine (Modified IW 4.0, unofficially IW 5.0)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012) - Black Ops II engine (Heavily Modified IW 3.0)
• Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013) - IW 6.0 (Updated MW3 engine)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops III (2015) - Black Ops III engine (heavily modified Black Ops II engine)
• Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016) - IW 7.0 (Modified IW 6.0 engine)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (2018) - Black Ops 4 engine (heavily modified Black Ops III engine)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020) - Black Ops Cold War engine (heavily modified Black Ops 4 engine) with tools from IW 8.0

Revamped

A revamped version of the engine, named IW 8.0, was developed by Infinity Ward Poland and Infinity Ward LA with assistance from NVIDIA. Its development started five years before the release of Modern Warfare in 2019. In 2022, Infinity Ward released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II with the updated engine IW 9.0.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) - IW 8.0
• Call of Duty: Warzone (2020) - IW 8.0
• Call of Duty: Vanguard (2021) - IW 8.0
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022) - IW 9.0
• Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 (2022) - IW 9.0
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023) - IW 9.0
• Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile (2024) - IW 9.0
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (2024) - IW 9.0

Sledgehammer Games Engine

Sledgehammer Games built a custom in house-engine for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare with little code from the MW3 Engine. An upgraded version was developed for Call of Duty: WWII. It is also used by Raven Software and Beenox for the two remasters of the Modern Warfare series.

• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014) - Version 1
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (2016) - Version 1
• Call of Duty: WWII (2017) - Version 2
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered (2020) - Version 1

Treyarch NGL

Treyarch developed an in-house engine named Treyarch NGL based on the Call of Duty: United Offensive version of the Id Tech 3 engine. It was only used in two games before it was replaced by IW 3.0 for Call of Duty: World at War.

• Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (2005)
• Call of Duty 3 (2006)

Asura Engine

The Asura Engine is the engine used by Rebellion Developments for their version of Call of Duty: World at War.

• Call of Duty: World at War: Final Fronts (2008)

RenderWare

The RenderWare is a game engine developed by Criterion Games. It was chosen by Spark Unlimited for one Call of Duty game.

• Call of Duty: Finest Hour (2004)

Unity Engine

Unity is a generic cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies. So far it's only used for mobile Call of Duty games.

• Call of Duty: Heroes (2014)
• Call of Duty: Strike Team (2013)
• Call of Duty: Mobile (2019)

Trivia

• The choice of RenderWare by Spark Unlimited made the development of Call of Duty: Finest Hour extremely difficult and caused the massive delay of the release date.
  • During the development of the game, Criterion Games, the developer of the RenderWare engine, was acquired by Electronic Arts, one of the rivals of Call of Duty's publisher, Activision.