Modern Warfare 4 DMZ Early Access Announced for Pre-Orders

Are you ready to dive back into the DMZ? Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is bringing back the extraction shooter mode, and if you pre-order, you can get in early.

Activision and Infinity Ward announced today that DMZ will join campaign early access for pre-order players. That means if you pre-ordered the standard or Vault Edition on PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, or Xbox Series X/S, you'll get to play DMZ before the official launch. The campaign early access kicks off Friday, October 16, followed by DMZ early access on Tuesday, October 20. The full game launches on Friday, October 23.

The news came with a new gameplay trailer for DMZ, giving us a fresh look at the mode. DMZ was first introduced in 2022's Modern Warfare 2 as Call of Duty's take on extraction shooters. It was expanded over time but many felt it was an underwhelming prototype. Support ended in late 2023, and now Activision is taking another swing at it.

Infinity Ward is calling the new DMZ the series' "definitive extraction shooter experience." It promises persistent progression in the open-world combat environment known as the Hajin Exclusion Zone. In a recent behind-the-scenes video, multiplayer creative director Joe Cecot explained: "There's an interesting story with the DMZ beta, where we had to make some decisions. Certain things we wanted to do, we couldn't do. At the end of the day, we learned a lot: That we made a very approachable, fun sandbox that was fun to fight in, to explore, to make friends in, to get into fights in. There's a bunch of stuff we left on the table, so as soon as we finished with the last game, we were just gung-ho on, 'OK, we know what we want to do.'"

So what does this mean for you? If you pre-ordered, you'll get to experience both the campaign and DMZ a few days early. But core multiplayer offerings won't officially launch until October 23. Our first proper look at DMZ gameplay arrived in June, with even more details shared earlier this week. Infinity Ward is also working to deal with wall-hack cheaters, which you can read about here.

Will you be pre-ordering to get early access to DMZ? Or are you waiting for the full launch? Let us know in the comments!