Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is borrowing the mechanic that made Counter-Strike legendary: buying your gear mid-match with money you earn by playing. Activision has officially announced Collateral, a new multiplayer mode that layers a Counter-Strike-style cash economy on top of the classic Search and Destroy formula. It arrives with Modern Warfare 4 on October 23 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Switch 2.
How Collateral Works
At its core, Collateral is a riff on Search and Destroy: teams alternate between attacking and defending two bomb sites. The difference is the economy. Instead of a predetermined loadout, everyone starts each match with a pistol and the same amount of cash. You earn money by eliminating enemies and playing the objective, then spend it between rounds on armor, perks, equipment and increasingly powerful weapons.
Just like in Counter-Strike, weapons and equipment are lost when you die — but your accumulated cash carries over into the next round. Collateral also strips away several systems that normally define Call of Duty: no respawns, no automatic health regeneration, no custom loadouts, and no Killstreaks except the UAV, which is only available as a team purchase.
The Buy Menu
The list of what you can spend your cash on should feel familiar to anyone who has played Counter-Strike or Valorant:
- Armor and perks: Armor Vest, Battle Hardened, Lethal Reach, Fast Hands, Ghost
- Equipment: Flash Grenade, Molotov Cocktail, Frag Grenade, Stim, Smoke Wall, Riot Shield
- Pistols: Silenced Pistol, Revolver, Akimbo Pistols, Power Pistol
- Standard issue: Shotgun, Light Machine Gun, Marksman Rifle, Silenced SMG, Agile SMG
- Tier 1 rifles: Semi Auto Rifle, High Damage Rifle, Burst Rifle, Silenced Rifle, Sniper Rifle
- Team buy: UAV
Perks are deliberately limited and must also be bought with cash, forcing players into the economic decisions Counter-Strike has always been about — do you armor up this round, save for a rifle, or chip in for the UAV?
A Quiet Reveal for a Big Change
Strangely, Activision tucked the Collateral announcement into the end of a blog post primarily about Modern Warfare 4’s PC features, which include more than 800 customization options, a built-in performance benchmark, and support for DLSS 4.5 and AMD FSR Redstone. There’s no indication the mode is exclusive to PC. Activision is promising more details closer to launch.
The reveal caps a week where Activision has been courting lapsed players — it also announced a toggle to turn off Warzone’s silly skins, and finally made double XP tokens count down during matches instead of in real time. Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23.