Some PlayStation 5 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III players looking to enjoy the game’s newly released single-player campaign are encountering a bizarre problem: The game is locking them out from playing and asking for the Modern Warfare II disc.
For a long time, people have joked that new Call of Duty games are just the same game repackaged with a few new guns every year. It’s not true, of course, but some installments do feel very similar to past entries thanks to similar technology and assets being used across the franchise. But MW3 on PS5 pushes this further, with trophies on PS5 being listed as DLC for MW2. And now, some players are reporting that they can’t even play the game on PS5 due to an error message asking them to insert the PS4 version of Modern Warfare II.
As reported and confirmed by IGN on November 2, players are complaining online that they can’t play the new game’s campaign—which is out now for folks who pre-ordered—because of an error locking them out. Awkwardly, this error message asks players to “Please insert a play disc for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and retry.” A bit odd, as these players purchased the new game, Modern Warfare III.
Kotaku has reached out to Activision for comment.
While some players have suggested workarounds on Reddit, that doesn’t seem to be fixing the issue for everyone dealing with the odd error. Activision seems aware of the problem and tweeted that it is “investigating” the issues. A later tweet confirmed an update had been pushed that should fix the issue for players following a console restart.
Nowhere in either tweets did Activision mention what the game’s error text specifically stated. That’s likely because this strange error is just more evidence that reports from 2022—claiming Modern Warfare III was planned to be a Modern Warfare II expansion—were indeed accurate..
On November 1, players discovered that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III on PS5 didn’t have a platinum trophy, reigniting speculation that the new game was somehow being treated as a DLC for the previous one. This issue was also spotted on the Steam version of the game, with MW3’s achievements listed as DLC for MW2.
The MW2 disc error and the DLC trophy episode may be leftovers of when this entry in the CoD series wasn’t a full game, but a paid expansion for Modern Warfare II. While eventually plans changed, as reported by Bloomberg in February, it seems some ghosts of those past expansion plans linger in Modern Warfare III for PS5.
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