Activision has unexpectedly released updates for several classic Call of Duty games, including 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The official explanation points to security fixes, but the simultaneous attention being given to several older entries has already sparked speculation that the publisher may be preparing something bigger.

Although a new Call of Duty installment is only a few months away, some of the franchise’s most interesting developments currently have more to do with its past than its future. Over the past several days, Activision has surprised fans by releasing updates for some of the oldest games in the series. The most notable case, and so far the only one the company has officially commented on, is 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The game received a new patch on September 3 designed to let PC players return without facing the same serious security concerns.

In a statement provided to Windows Central, Activision said that this week’s update “fixes all known vulnerabilities in Modern Warfare 2.” The publisher is understood to be referring primarily to remote code execution issues that posed a significant security risk to players still using the PC version of the game. Unfortunately, no comparable updates have been applied to the classic versions available on Xbox Series X/S through backward compatibility.

What makes the situation especially unusual is that Modern Warfare 2 is far from the only older Call of Duty title to receive an unexpected update in recent days. 2014’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was patched on August 27 despite having a tiny active player base, while the same thing has happened with 2011’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts. Activision has not yet explained those updates, even though some have been substantial. The Modern Warfare 3 patch, for example, weighed in at 14.1 GB and upgraded the game from 32-bit to 64-bit architecture.

The Million-Dollar Question

All of this comes after Activision found significant success with the PlayStation 5 re-releases of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops II. That naturally raises the question of whether these updates are genuinely being made for security reasons alone or whether the company is preparing similar re-releases for other classic entries. Nothing has been officially announced yet, but considering how well those previous releases performed, it would hardly be surprising if Activision decided to capitalize once again on nostalgia for some of the most commercially successful games in Call of Duty history.

Source: 3DJuegos