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Technology

Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto Online Has a Serious Security Bug for PC Users

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Photo: Sergei Elagin (Shutterstock)

Reports indicate that a bug in Grand Theft Auto V Online is putting PC gamers’ gameplay—and even, potentially, hardware—at risk.

The bug is allegedly allowing cheaters and modders to hijack, edit, or corrupt PC gamers account information. Some players report having all of their gameplay and account data erased, while others have said that their in-game currency has been stolen. Worse, the bug allegedly allows for “partial remote code execution,” which could allow malicious users to edit players PC files. While GTA’s publisher, Rockstar Games, hasn’t officially commented on the situation yet, many commentators have encouraged PC players to refrain from playing the game until we all have a better picture of what’s going on.

News of the troubles first started popping up in various pockets of the internet over the weekend, with one particular observer, the twitter account Tez2 (which regularly updates about Rockstar news), posting extensively about the exploit. Complaints also exploded in Rockstar’s official support forums.

“Gta online on pc is currently unplayable due to severe exploits, this needs to be fixed,” one user posted.

“Scared to play online,” another commented. “Please fix this rockstar, I really like this game.”

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Another merely said: “GET YOUR *** TOGETHER ROCKSTAR!”

Meanwhile, a subreddit devoted to the game has called for players to avoid the game until further notice. “As we’ve learned it is not safe to play the game on PC right now due to a very dangerous exploit that has just come to light,” reads a pinned post shared in the subreddit. “We need to mass-report this to Rockstar so they can’t ignore it.”

On the same subreddit, users have expressed frustration that Rockstar hasn’t addressed—or even confirmed—the security issue yet: “Absolutely the most unforgivable element of this. R* is more concerned with bad press than telling people the extent to which their game has been breached and what danger it poses to their personal information,” commented one user. “It really makes me think the worst, if they can’t even come out and say X is safe for now.”

Tez2, which has been monitoring the situation, has written that “Rockstar is aware [of the problem] and have been logging any affected account before the first mod menu started abusing the new exploits.” However, the company itself hasn’t published an official statement on the issue yet.

BleepingComputer has reported that the vulnerability associated with the exploit has already accrued an official CVE designation and is being tracked as CVE-2023-24059. The CVE describes the bug as allowing a hacker to “achieve partial remote code execution or modify files on a PC.” There aren’t a whole lot of details available about how the exploit is supposed to work, however.

Gizmodo reached out to Rockstar for comment on the apparent security problems but have not heard back. We will update this story if they respond.

If the bug does turn out to be real, it would be far from the first bit of security trouble that Rockstar has been through lately. Last year, a cybercriminal managed to compromise the gaming giant’s systems and proceeded to steal (and later leak) source code to the upcoming GTA 6.



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Technology

Former Halo Infinite Dev Blasts Management Over Layoffs

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Image: 343 Industries / Microsoft

Of all the Microsoft teams caught in the blast radius of mass layoffs announced yesterday, it’s possible Halo Infinite maker 343 Industries was among the worst hit. The studio has faced a wave of departures following Halo Infinite’s multiplayer struggles, and the new cuts have sparked strong criticism of those who managed it into this mess in the first place.

“The layoffs at 343 shouldn’t have happened and Halo Infinite should be in a better state,” former Halo Infinite multiplayer designer, Patrick Wren, tweeted Wednesday night. “The reason for both of those things is incompetent leadership up top during Halo Infinite development causing massive stress on those working hard to make Halo the best it can be.”

It’s no secret at this point that Halo Infinite faced a tumultuous development cycle, from a constantly rotating cast of directors to long delays after a gameplay reveal was pilloried online for its rough-looking graphics. Former studio leads have also previously hinted at periods of crunch on the project, while a Bloomberg report detailed developers’ struggles with the game’s engine and problems with Microsoft’s reliance on contract workers who constantly filtered out of the studio rather than full-time staff. “The contract stuff is a whole other can of worms that pisses me off,” Wren tweeted last night. “So many amazing people and talent that just disappeared.”

It’s extremely rare for game developers to speak candidly about the issues they’ve witnessed on past projects, let alone share their opinions openly about how a team or studio was managed. Wren, who left 343 Industries just before Halo Infinite’s launch in 2021, went on to praise his former colleagues and their efforts to deliver on the full promise of the game’s multiplayer.

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“The people I worked every day with were passionate about Halo and wanted to make something great for the fans,” he tweeted. “hey helped push for a better Halo and got laid off for it. Devs still there are working hard on that dream. Look at Forge. Be kind to them during this awful time.”

The harsh criticism came after Microsoft announced 10,000 jobs would be cut across the tech giant’s operations, including gaming, despite reporting “record results” last year, including $83 billion in operating income. The night before, the company’s top executives were reportedly busy being serenaded by Sting at a personalized concert in the Swiss Alps.

Meanwhile, as reports from Kotaku and others poured in that Xbox studios ranging from The Coalition to Bethesda were caught up in the layoffs, it became clear as the day progressed that 343 Industries was facing especially brutal cuts as many developers on Halo Infinite, including some very senior ones, shared the news on on social media that they’d been impacted.

Even prior to yesterday’s layoffs, 343 Industries has been facing wave after wave of high level departures as Halo Infinite struggled to ship new seasonal updates and features on time. The most notable was studio head Bonnie Ross’ departure last September. More recently, multiplayer director and longtime Halo veteran Tom French revealed he was leaving in December. And yesterday, amid the chaos, Bloomberg reported that director and longtime Halo writer, Joseph Staten, was headed to the Xbox publishing side of the business as the studio made the “difficult decision to restructure.”

Even more unfortunate, this latest setback for the studio comes on the heels of a rare bright spot in Halo Infinite’s post-launch live service campaign: the Forge creator mode. Following the cancellation of split-screen coop, many fans saw it as an opportunity to save the game by allowing players to make their maps and modes. And so they have, with creations inspired by everything from The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim to Pokémon. It’s the most positive some Halo Infinite players have felt since launch but just like that the game’s future is once again uncertain.

Back when Halo Infinite was first revealed in 2020, 343 Industries studio head Chris Lee called it the “start of the next 10 years of Halo.” A few months later he left to join Amazon.

   



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Technology

GTA 6’s Massive Leak Makes It Hard To Play GTA Online In 2023

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Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – 2002
Screenshot: Rockstar Games

Last year, footage of the next Grand Theft Auto—assumed to be GTA 6—leaked online. While Rockstar quickly tried to erase the videos from the internet and plug the holes in the ship, it was impossible to completely contain such a massive, unprecedented leak. So fans around the world got a very good look at the future of Grand Theft Auto. And now myself and others find it hard to go back to the aging GTA Online.

Late on September 19, 2022, 90 short videos of early gameplay of what would later be confirmed by Rockstar as the next GTA entry leaked online via a hacker. The footage revealed a lot about the next game in the massively popular open-world franchise, including that the series would be returning to Vice City, Florida, a fan-favorite location last seen in GTA: Vice City Stories, the prequel to the beloved PS2 classic, GTA: Vice City. It also gave us a good look at the new protagonists of this next criminal adventure and some of the missions we might experience when GTA 6 is eventually released. Fans even began mapping out the game’s virtual world using the leaks.

Rockstar undoubtedly hates the leak and likely wishes it could rewind time and prevent it from ever happening at all, but it did end up revitalizing the playerbase. For the first time in a long time, there was excitement and energy in the GTA community, which after years of GTA Online updates and poorly received remasters was in a pretty bad place prior to the leak. Even an early, unfinished or unpolished leak of GTA 6 was better than radio silence and glitchy remasters. People were pumped and hyped about the future of Grand Theft Auto in a way I hadn’t seen in years.

But then, once the leaks were scrubbed from the web and it became clear Rockstar wasn’t going to release any official teaser or trailer to capitalize on the moment, all I and other GTA fans could do was go back to GTA Online. And that’s harder to do now that I’ve seen the future.

Rockstar Games

The latest big and free expansion to GTA Online, Los Santos Drug Wars, was released late last year at a really bad time for me to play and cover it for the site. So I just…didn’t play it. For the first time ever in the history of GTA Online, I skipped a new update completely. I’ve still not played it. At first, I blamed my skipping of the latest update on bad timing and a busy schedule due to holidays and end-of-the-year content. But now, weeks removed from all that, with more free time to play stuff, I’ve still not fired up the new update. And I think it’s time to admit to myself that my growing burnout around GTA Online was increased greatly by that small taste of what’s to come. That look at the future of GTA in Florida ruined me.

I could go back and drive around the same highways and streets of Los Santos I’ve been cruising around since 2013. I could fire up the game and check out the newest business and missions connected to it. I could, sure. The thing is, I don’t know if I want to. I mean, eventually, I will play more GTA Online. I sort of have to as it’s part of my job here at Kotaku. Yet, if it wasn’t part of my career there’s a real chance that I might just never play GTA Online again.

To be clear: It’s not because GTA Online is worse today than it was a decade ago—it’s actually much better to play in 2023 than in 2013—but because getting a glimpse of a fresh new world has killed my desire to boot up the same old Los Santos after a decade of GTA Online and GTA V. I mean, just having new songs on the radio will be amazing. I love Queen’s “Radio Ga-Ga” but you can only hear it so many times in 10 years before you’re ready for new tunes, too.

At this point, I’m hoping the wait for Grand Theft Auto 6 and its sunny beaches, palm trees, and new characters isn’t too much longer, because I’m ready to leave Los Santos behind for a tropical vacation to Vice City.

 

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Technology

Halo Devs Use Fan’s Pokémon Map To Fix Game’s Aiming Issues

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Image: The Pokemon Company / 343 Industries / Kotaku

Halo has a long tradition of community-made maps and game modes that range everywhere from serious to silly. Recently, one map and mode combo that’s more on the playful and fun side of things caught the attention of 343 Industries as an opportunity to fix long-standing shooting issues. Named after a certain Pokémon notorious for digging and jumping out of holes, this community creation is now being used to pinpoint and fix aiming and shot registration woes, as they’ve plagued Halo Infinite since it launched just over a year ago.

Halo Infinite, the latest entry in the long-running and often critically acclaimed first person shooter series, only recently received an update that included a beta version of its in-game map creator: Forge. First premiering in Halo 3, Forge has been a staple of the series ever since 2007, allowing anyone to create a map of their own design with the tools necessary to create custom games for it, be those party and minigames or more traditional takes on the franchise’s well-known modes, like Slayer or Capture the Flag. One such community-created game, that takes its name from the Diglett Pokémon, seems to have caught 343’s eye as an opportunity to test drive fixes to the game’s core mechanics.

Read More: Someone Recreated The Entire Halo 1 Warthog Finale In Halo Infinite

With community Forge maps popping up on a regular basis these days, 343 Industries’ senior community manager John Junyszek put out a tweet asking for the community’s favorite Forge minigames so far. When competitive Halo player Linz shouted out Digletts, a game where players pop out of holes to take sniper shots at one another, Junyszek followed up with an interesting bit of behind-the-scenes trivia:

Kotaku has reached out to 343 Industries for more information.

As many Halo fans have known, while Infinite’s core mechanics are solid and work well, there have been issues around aiming, with many players suspecting that the game seems particularly off when trying to line up precision shots with a sniper rifle, either descoped or while aiming down sights. Whether this is due to the game’s auto-aim function that eases controller aim (and exists on most modern shooters that take controller inputs), bullet magnetism, or the notorious desync issues many players have had with Infinite isn’t totally certain. Since Diglet is a game that only features aiming and shooting, it’s a pretty perfect test environment for studying aiming behavior. Junyszek said that the “minigame has recently helped our team further test and investigate various shot registration situations, especially in regards to latency and networking. Since it’s a curated environment without many variables, it’s helped us investigate specific scenarios.”

Check out the the Diglett game mode in action here:

343 Industries / iSpiteful

Who knew RPing as a Diglet armed with a legendary anti-materiel rifle could be so productive?



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Technology

Overwatch 2 Bastion Skin Costs One Coin, Causes Problems

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The Gingerbread Bastion skin is available for one coin on the Overwatch 2 store, and your coin balance will l remind you of it until the end of days.
Screenshot: Blizzard Entertainment/Kotaku

Blizzard is offering Overwatch 2 players a holiday treat in the form of a Gingerbread Bastion skin. It’s exactly what it sounds like: the hero shooter’s robot, made entirely of gingerbread and candy canes. His bird companion is even made out of gingerbread, and the whole getup is super cute. The skin and a candy cane weapon charm are available now as a cheap, one-Overwatch-Coin package, but what was likely meant as a gesture of holiday goodwill comes with a notable irksome drawback: now, my Overwatch coin balance is no longer a nice round number.

If you, like many others, are the kind of person who needs to turn the volume on your TV up or down so the level number ends in a five or zero, you likely know what this means. Now, no matter how many coins you earn through completing weekly challenges or paying for them outright, you will never have a flat number again, as all the coin amounts you can get in Overwatch 2 end in zero already. So, if you buy the Gingerbread Bastion skin, there will always be a pesky nine at the end of your currency. Unless Blizzard releases something with a cost that ends in nine.

Bastion and his gingerbread bird are cute, but at what cost?
Screenshot: Blizzard Entertainment/Kotaku

I joke, but the discrepancy actually does have a tangible effect on your using the Overwatch 2 store. All the cosmetics you can buy in the in-game shop cost round numbers, and there’s no way to buy Overwatch Coins for any less than 500 coins ($4.99). So, for example, say you wanted to buy a skin that costs 1000 Overwatch Coins, but you just bought the Bastion skin for one coin, bringing your balance to 999 Coins. You’d be one coin away from buying the skin you wanted, but the only means you’d have of immediately closing the gap would be to pay at least $4.99. The next quickest way would be to complete four weekly challenges, which would give you 30 Coins, but is, of course, more time consuming.

Ultimately, because of the grindy systems the Overwatch 2 store has in place for acquiring currency, a skin costing one coin has a handful of weird drawbacks, whether that be from it putting your coin balance in a weird spot in its economy, or you having to deal with a non round number in your wallet staring back at you every time you open the store. But as a holiday gift, it’s the thought that counts, I guess?

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Outside of seasoned Bastion skins, Overwatch 2 is currently hosting its annual Winter Wonderland event, which includes a new mode that harkens back to when Mei could freeze everybody in place.

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Technology

RIP To These 14 Games That Died In 2022

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The graveyard is expanding, y’all.
Image: Bandai Namco / Blizzard / Codemasters / Ubisoft / Kotaku / Odette Villarreal (Shutterstock)

There was a time, back in the day, where you’d just buy a finished game and played it. No day-one updates or extra patches—it was simple. These games couldn’t “die” because they simply…existed. But as MMOs and live-service games (or “games as a service”) began to proliferate, requiring online servers and constant support from developers to keep things up and running, so too has the number of games that’ve hit in the graveyard. Please, bow your heads as were solemnly mark this year’s casualties.

There were quite a few, too, from racing sims like Dirt Rally and Project Cars to battle royales like Hyper Scape and massively-multiplayer online role-playing games such as Tera. Not every game on this list is “dead” in the traditional sense, with some still having minor functionality that makes them somewhat playable, but all are no longer receiving developmental resources or updates, effectively making them dead games.

Read More: 12 Games Killed In 2021 That Prove Preservation Is Vital

With that, here are 14 games that died in 2022:

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Technology

Game Removes Loot Boxes, Players Revolt Instead Of Celebrate

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Popular free-to-play mobile game Brawl Stars is doing something a bit different. In an era where it seems every game is trying to nickel and dime you with more and more stuff to buy, instead it’s removing loot boxes and all random rewards entirely from the game. It’s yet another sign that loot boxes are likely to become a relic of the past as lawmakers and players push back on the random rewards. But that doesn’t mean Brawl Stars players are universally happy about their removal.

Released in 2019 for phones and tablets, Brawl Stars mixed cute characters with MOBA-like gameplay and some battle royale elements. The end result was a fun top-down competitive action game that I played for weeks and weeks. But since I stopped playing, millions have continued to enjoy it: Brawl Stars has made over a billion dollars in profit for Supercell and still has an active player base and community. Now, Supercell has removed all loot boxes from the game, and reaction to the change is oddly mixed.

Announced in a Brawl Talk video posted last week, Supercell’s latest update to Brawl Stars has removed all random rewards from the game. These boxes were mainly used to unlock new characters in the game. Since its release three years ago, Brawl Stars has heavily featured loot boxes as part of its rewards. But with yesterday’s update, that’s no longer the case.

Supercell / Brawl Stars

“No more probabilities, no more random rewards, and no more playing the guessing game when you unlock Brawlers,” said the game’s lead designer Frank Keienburg in Supercell’s Brawl Talk video.

Yesterday, as part of this update, all unclaimed boxes were automatically opened and all the rewards were given to players accordingly. Moving forward, Keienburg and Supercell say that all rewards—including its battle passes—will be replaced with “different, deterministic rewards, some of which are new to the game.” Now, players have a new battle pass-like feature, The Starr Road, which lets them unlock all characters for free via grinding. Players can now just buy any brawler they want with gems, instead of randomly buying dozens of loot boxes to maybe get a specific hero.

“We’re making this change for a few reasons,” continued Keienburg. “Mainly, moving away from probabilities and chance, which will make things more fair and predictable for you. It also gives you clear and exciting goals every time you play the game.”

Of course, there’s also the possibility that Supercell and other devs are removing loot boxes as various governments around the world begin cracking down on them with proposed new laws and regulations.

While I think removing loot boxes is a good thing and something worth celebrating—especially as mobile games continue to be some of the worst offenders with even good games like Marvel Snap including predatory purchases of over $100 or more—the community reaction is far less positive. While some players seem happy about the removal of random reward crates, others expressed disappointment. The comments on the Brawl Talk video has players rallying against the devs and demanding boxes return to Brawl Stars.

Why? For some it seems that the excitement of a loot box outweighed the frustration that often accompanies them. Others suggested they now have little interest in playing the game since random rewards are being removed. (I think some of these people need to stop and think if they really like Brawl Stars or just like pulling a virtual lever on a slot machine…) We saw something similar to this happen with Overwatch 2’s release, where some players were angry at the removal of loot boxes and demanded they be returned to the game. And while I agree that progression in Overwatch 2 sucks at the moment, I’d rather Blizzard figure out a way to fix that doesn’t involve bringing back loot boxes, even if it did give you a lot of free ones before.

The reality is that as games continue to become more and more popular, more countries will begin investigating the industry and how it makes money. And loot boxes are likely never to return in vogue as long as so many governments are leading crusades to regulate or outlaw them.

 

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Technology

NFL’s Best Team Plays A Lot Of GTA Online Roleplay Together

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Photo: Mitchell Leff (Getty Images)

The Philadelphia Eagles currently have the best record in the NFL, with 10 wins and only a single loss. And while you might expect this great record is the result of hard work, lots of practice, talented players, and some luck, you might be surprised to discover that Grand Theft Auto and online roleplaying are also a potential part of the team’s successful season.

Grand Theft Auto V is a very, very popular open-world video game that has been released on nearly as many consoles as Skyrim at this point. It also has a large online mode that is still—nearly a decade after its 2013 release—one of the most played games in the world. But, for many players, GTA Online isn’t the multiplayer experience they crave. Instead, players have flocked to modified versions of GTA V to play online in roleplay servers. These mods and fan-run servers allow people to roleplay together as cops, EMTs, firefighters, criminals, taxi drivers, and more. And it’s this specific type of online GTA experience—which Rockstar Games doesn’t regulate or control as tightly—that many Philadelphia Eagles team members are playing when off the field.

As reported by The New York Times, many Eagles players get excited to hop online and play with other team members after spending hours watching past games, studying, practicing, and weightlifting. For many, this offers them the chance to stop being NFL players and to be someone totally different. It also helps players in different positions, who don’t normally spend much time together, bond more, developing closer friendships that Eagles safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson says is the team’s “secret sauce.” He also runs one of the team’s own GTA roleplay servers from his basement, where he has a gaming PC setup that cost him $10,000.

Read More: NFL Linebacker Retires After Selling Rare Pokémon Card For Over $650,000

Other players told the Times that after playing GTA together online, they are all more connected and happier for each other, leading to players wanting to do more for each other on the field. For many Eagles, playing Grand Theft Auto with fellow teammates fits perfectly into their schedule, too.

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“A lot of people, especially me, are just at home doing nothing,” Eagles running back Miles Sanders said. “Since I’ve got my PC, I’ve been on the game more and calling people more.” Other Eagles teammates who play GTA with each other include defensive players Darius Slay, Avonte Maddox, linebacker Stewart Bradley, and running back Miles Sanders. In fact, according to The New York Times story, Sander’s GTA character was stuck in prison on Gardner-Johnson’s server earlier in the season. Some players, like running back Kenneth Gainwell even stream themselves playing GTA on Twitch for hours at a time.

Not only has roleplaying together in modded GTA servers helped players connect more, but it also offers them more things to talk about off the field beyond football. And for players like Gardner-Johnson, it’s all they want to do after working hard all day.

“I just want to play football, come home, and play video games,” said Gardner Johnson.

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Technology

343 Releases Previously Unseen Images From Halo 2 Development

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Image: 343

In Halo, “the sandbox” often refers to the weapons and vehicles on a map at any given time: all the toys you have to play with. But for a whole other set of Halo fans, that sandbox is the game itself. Be it through Forge or ambitious modding projects like SPV3, playing with the very core of the game itself is part of the legacy of the franchise. Now, Microsoft has made that even easier after publishing a thorough collection of modding resources for Halo: The Master Chief Collection. And as a surprise, some of these resources contain some never-before-seen images from Halo 2’s development way back in the early 2000s.

Today, Microsoft released official documentation for Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s mod tools, specifically Halo 2 and Halo 3 (other entries in the series are expected to receive documentation at a later date). As spotted by Halo modder Kiera on Twitter, some of the documentation for Halo 2 contains material directly from Bungie circa the early 2000s. With it are a few development images that few have seen until now.

Screenshot: Microsoft / Kotaku

What’s cool about these images is that they show off the inner workings of Halo 2’s engine. One of these images illustrates the “screenshot_cubemap” command. I’m not going to entirely pretend to know what this does, but based on the documentation, it’s for use in generating reflective surfaces, like we see in the old documentation photo provided.

Image: Microsoft / Kotaku

Another neat pair of images shows off debugging information, listing data for when a model is using specific weapons or playing out various animations.

Screenshot: Microsoft / Kotaku

Screenshot: Microsoft / Kotaku

Like many behind-the-scenes shots, these are hardly glamorous. But they are cool nonetheless. The development of Halo 2 is a tale of high ambition at the cost of abusive crunch, much of which has been talked about openly. Various materials from the game’s development have been seen before, while others remain out of reach, like the legendary 2003 E3 demo (which 343 has recently pondered finally making playable). Today, a little more has seen the light of day.



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Technology

The Call Of Duty MWII Battle Pass Is Pleasantly Non-Linear

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Image: Infinity Ward

In a November 9 blog, as part of a stuffed first season, Call of Duty announced that it was introducing a pliable battle pass system to both Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0, a huge deviation from Call of Duty’s norm.

CoD battle passes are often more direct, with battle pass tiers unlocking as you earn XP and progress normally through the game. But this latest battle pass doesn’t take a typical, linear, full-speed-ahead approach to CoD’s selection of unlockable skins, weapons, and Weapon Blueprints. Instead, as the blog puts it, it “takes the form of a multi-Sector map.”

This means you can unlock elements of the pass in the order you prefer, intentionally choosing features that interest you instead of slogging through levels that don’t. It could be a refreshing break from CoD’s familiar system.

“Each map has at least 20 Sectors with five items in each Sector—[earned Battle Token Tier Skips] can be used to either unlock adjacent Sectors or earn more items within an unlocked Sector,” the blog continued. “Essentially, these tokens can be used to unlock specific items within the Battle Pass at your own pace—whether it is a new free functional weapon or a cool new Operator Skin, you have control over what gets unlocked earlier on the road to 100% map completion.”

Outside of the battle pass, both games will get missions, maps, and more for their season one—Warzone will receive an open-world DMZ mode and different maps, including one for imagined capital city Al Mazrah, among other things, and MWII will also gain maps, including a “reimagined” version of Modern Warfare’s multiplayer Shoot House, fresh weapons, and playable characters.

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The CoD team said that players would get an even more detailed explanation of the battle pass next week, presumably after MWII’s and Warzone 2.0’s first season releases on November 16.

Until then, here’s are some additional highlights of MWII’s season one, both within and outside of the battle pass:

  • Four new weapons. Two of them, the Victus XMR Sniper Rifle and Bruen Ops Platform, are free with the battle pass.
  • Six new Operators, or playable characters. One of them, Nigerian counterterrorism group leader Zeus, unlocks automatically when you buy season one’s battle pass.
  • Surreally, football (the soccer kind) is also coming to MWII. Neymar Jr., Paul Pogba, and Leo Messi characters will roll out in bundles on November 21, November 25, and November 29 respectively. There will also apparently be a “limited-time CODBall mode.”
  • Hitting Rank 56 “will allow you to earn a persistent Prestige Rank across all seasons, rather than having it reset at the end of each season,” the blog said. After unlocking Prestige 1 with Rank 56, you will be able to go through four more ranks at your own pace.

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