Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 campaign enters early access, DMZ follows Oct 20

Players who pre-ordered Modern Warfare 4 digitally on Steam can now play its entire campaign. An official Steam post on October 16 announced that Campaign Early Access is live in Call of Duty and runs until the full launch on October 23. On October 17, the Call of Duty app stood at rank 17 in Steam's most played chart with a daily peak of 108,551 players, after rank 53 a week earlier.

On October 18, the app still had 71,613 players online at 21:23 UTC, with a peak of 101,727 that day.

What the campaign and DMZ offer

According to the official post, the campaign spans sixteen missions. Private Park Hyun Jun and his squad fight back against a full-scale invasion across the Korean Peninsula, while John Price hunts the one pulling the strings. Access requires a digital pre-order of the Standard Digital Edition or Vault Edition. Finishing missions unlocks rewards such as Base Operators, a calling card and Double XP tokens, which carry over to Multiplayer and DMZ at launch.

Kotaku describes a six-hour, 16-mission campaign. Windows Central calls the structure mostly linear, with one mission letting players engage or avoid North Korean operators while hunting for 58 collectibles. Destructoid notes "unfortunately no co-op this time".

The next step is DMZ. A post from October 9 confirms DMZ Early Access for the same pre-order buyers from October 20. The developers describe DMZ as an extraction shooter with persistent progression in an open-world area called Hajin, with a Forward Operating Base as hub, 3D Printer crafting, Bounties and player progression to Level 70.

How players and critics respond

The Call of Duty app as a whole sits at 58 percent positive from 785,826 Steam reviews, rated Mixed. The press reports far higher figures for the Modern Warfare 4 early access reviews, though the numbers vary: Windows Central cites 82 percent "Very Positive", Destructoid 86 percent from more than 1,000 reviews, PCGamesN 90 percent from 1,996. PCGamesN points out that these reviews cover only the story and that the score may change once opinions on the multiplayer come in. It also reports praise for set-pieces, pacing and the cast, who say they are "overwhelmed".

Notebookcheck reports over 108,000 players on the first day of early access, more than Black Ops 7 managed, but well below the 313,000 seen in the Black Ops 6 launch period in 2024. PCGamesN cautions that Steam figures can't show how many people play across the whole player base.

Critics have not given final scores yet. Kotaku says outlets are waiting for more time with the multiplayer, including DMZ. Campaign verdicts are mostly positive: according to Kotaku, PC Gamer praised it as a single-player experience not to be skipped, and Nintendo Life's roundup quotes Insider Gaming (9/10) calling it the "greatest Call of Duty campaign ever made", with another review ranking it the best since Modern Warfare 2019. There is criticism too: the same roundup mentions rigid mission design, and one review quoted by Pure Xbox found that the open-world sections slowed the pace.

Returning players should remember the late-August multiplayer open beta. Notebookcheck says it drew mixed impressions, with praise for the shooting and controversy over the powerful aim assist.

For now, only the campaign is playable, and only with a digital pre-order. DMZ opens on October 20 and the full game on October 23. Anyone mainly interested in multiplayer has no settled verdict to go on yet, and the strong Steam review figures reflect the story alone.