想抢先体验最重磅的新游戏吗？今年的优惠有些变化。

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is out today, sort of.

That fact caught me off guard when I realized it earlier this week. I’d only absorbed the more heavily promoted official October 23 release date.

But it came out today, Friday, October 16, as of 1pm ET, to anyone who ordered it digitally.

Many game publishers like to put a higher price tag on early access to their games, though that’s not the case with Call of Duty.

For Modern Warfare 4, anyone who buys the $70 standard, digital edition of the game can play the campaign as of October 16, or any other date ahead of the official launch on the 23rd. Note that it’s for digital pre-orders only, which tend to have better profit margins for publishers. Access to the game’s DMZ mode unlocks on the 20th and the rest of the game’s multiplayer three days after that.

Selling early access is a popular thing among publishers, but it’s not universal. Sony and Nintendo, for example, tend not to sell early access to their games. Take Two does, but not for all. Its upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI, a game that surely could have been sold at double its asking price for one-week-early access, has no such early version.

I’ve long been fascinated—and occasionally amused—by how big publishers sell early access to their games. I’ve been wanting to do a check-in on the state of things.

So, let’s do that… You’ll see that the deals keep changing ever so slightly.

NBA 2K extends the early access window

Take Two has been bundling early access into higher-priced versions of its NBA 2K basketball franchise for years. This year, they extended the window for playersto get an early jump.

NBA 2K 27, which sold at a standard price of $70, could also be purchased this summer for $100. That pricier version gave players the perk of up to nine days’ early access, ahead of the game’s official September 4 launch.
This year’s deal was an increase from seven days’ advance access for the $100 version of 2025’s NBA 2K26.
(Flashback: NBA 2K19, released in 2018, offered four days’ early access for $100. They keep adding days!)

Take Two extended the early access window this year mostly by moving it up a few days, compared to last year.

The implication with any of these early access windows is that the game is actually in a sellable state for all customers as of the start of that early access date. You can even interpret the early access date as a game’s real launch, with the “official” release date being delayed access.

Players spend big to start playing early. In 2025 and 2026 again, NBA 2K was the best-selling game in the U.S. in August, by dollars, according to the tracking firm Circana. That’s with only the early-access versions factored in (including a $150 version as well). The standard $70 version didn’t ship until September.

Note: The deluxe editions of NBA 2K also include bundles of virtual currency and items, so when people pay $100 instead of $70, they’re also potentially enticed by the digital goods, not just the early play time. In NBA2K in particular, playing early and getting virtual currency to quickly raise the stats of their NBA stars can work in combination as incentives to get a leg up on other players.

Forza’s pricier extension

Fans of Microsoft’s Forza Horizon series have long been able to pay more to play early. It just cost $20 more to do so this year.

Back in 2021, people who bought the $100 premium edition of Forza Horizon 5 could play the game four days ahead of its official release. Gamers who got that version also effectively pre-paid for the game’s two expansions.

Anyone who wanted to play this year’s Forza Horizon 6 four days early (and pre-pay for its two expansions) had to pay more. The new game’s premium edition cost $120.

Between Horizon 5 and Horizon 6, the base price of the game went up by $10, from $60 to $70.

A “digital deluxe” edition that did not include early access or the expansions rose $20, from $80 to $100.

Call of Duty’s old offer returns

The one-week-early access for this year’s Call of Duty’s campaign isn’t brand-new. Activision attached a similar perk for 2023’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: Buy the standard edition early digitally, access the campaign early. That time, the window was closer to eight days, from November 2 through the 10th.

No such deal was offered for 2024’s Call of Duty Black Ops 6 and 2025’s Black Ops 7. Instead, pre-ordering any version of those games, including physical copies, granted those players early access to the game’s multiplayer beta, several weeks prior to the full game’s launch. For BO6, the early beta access came six days ahead of the general public’s chance to play the beta. For BO7, pre-order customers got a three day jump on the beta.

Both of those Black Ops games were offered as part of Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription at launch, with Game Pass subscribers all getting to start the game the same time as people who outright paid for the game.

Modern Warfare 3 was not offered as a day one Game Pass game (Microsoft hadn’t purchased Activision Blizzard yet). This year’s Modern Warfare 4 also won’t launch into Game Pass. It won’’t be on the service until Holiday 2027, Activision said yesterday.

A couple more early access offers from this season:

Microsoft’s Gears of War: E-Day offered players five days’ early access to its campaign (not its co-op Horde mode nor its competitive multiplayer mode) for $100. The base game sells for $70. Game Pass subscribers could also pay $30 to play it at the earlier date.
Remedy Entertainment’s Control Resonant offered 48 hours of early access to the whole single-player game for PlayStation users who paid $70 for the game’s digital deluxe edition. There was no early access on Xbox or PC. The base game cost $60.

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Item 2: In brief..

👀 U.S. rep Ritchie Torres (D-NY) says he plans to introduce a Power to the Players Act, which would require game companies to allow consumers who pay for digital games to own them and “trade” them. Anything short of that is a “rental disguised as a sale,” Torres said in a press release.

The bill, which faces numerous procedural hurdles before even potentially being put to a vote, echoes the law passed in California in 2024. That law requires game companies to clearly and conspicuously inform consumers if the digital games they pay for are simply licenses that can be revoked.
In announcing the bill, Torres lamented the pending demise of Take Two’s 2024 game NBA 2K25, which will see its online servers shut off later this year. That series is the subject to an ongoing lawsuit over whether such server shutdowns, coupled with the inability to transfer virtual currency purchased for such games, amounts to “theft.” (Take Two denies it.)

🎮 House House, development studio behind Untitled Goose Game and this year’s acclaimed co-op exploration game Big Walk says they won’t develop the latter for Xbox due to an ongoing boycott of the brand by the BDS (Build, Divestment, Sanctions)

BDS is critical not of Xbox directly but of parent company Microsoft. In April 2025, it targeted Xbox for a boycott, stating that “Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza”
Later last year, Microsoft canceled some contracted services with a unit in the Israeli Ministry of Defense after reporting in The Guardian indicated that Microsoft technology had been used in surveillance of Palestinians, in violation of the company’s terms of service.

🪧 Quality assurance workers at Activision voted on Thursday to authorize a strike, which will gives union leaders at the Communication Workers of America the option to call one over a lack of progress in negotiations with company management.

The union noted that contract talks have been going on for two years.
No strike has been called, but the vote amounts to a pressure tactic to get a contract finalized.

💰 Polymarket is paying people to promote its esport-related content on social media, urging a Discord server of some 800 accounts to make their messages “look organic,” ReaderGrev reports.

Those efforts are not always coupled with a reminder to tag such social media posts as paid promotion, the outlet notes.
ReaderGrev observes that betting on esports is a “growing market” for the predictions company.

Item 3: The week ahead

Monday, October 19

Event: The latest Steam Next Fest, featuring thousands of demos for upcoming games begins (and runs all week)

Wednesday, October 21

Game release: Stupid Never Dies (PC, PS5) is an action game from GPTrack50, a studio co-founded by longtime Capcom developer and producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi

Thursday, October 22

Game release: Final Fantasy Resonance (PayStation, Switch) is a throwback 2D FF game, modifying a discontinued mobile game into a premium release. Nintendo Switch Sports Resort (Switch 2) is the latest motion-controlled sports game from Nintendo, featuring bowling, tennis, some flying (if only it was a new Pilotwings…), some Jet-skiing (if only it was a new Wave Race…), thumb wrestling and more.