M
Mike Nelson, Xbox Wire Editor
Guest
How Overload Brings a Package of Competitive Fun to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Multiplayer
Published
October 14, 2025Summary
- Overload is a brand-new mode for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Multiplayer that mixes in a variety of community favorites like Capture the Flag and Uplink into a singular new experience.
- Design Director Matt Scronce and Senior Director of Production Yale Miller share insights into how the new Multiplayer mode was created.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 launches November 14, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox on PC, and Cloud – with support for Xbox Play Anywhere and day one with Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass – as well as PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Battle.net, and Steam.
I look at my HUD and see that the Overload Device is on the move again. I break off and circle back to my team’s control zone, hoping to intercept my opponent before he can score the winning point. I turn a corner, and we meet. They break into a slide to duck under fire – but that’s exactly what I planned for. He falls short with the package sitting idle just outside the zone… then his teammate takes me out, picks up the device, and finishes the job. Match point.
Overload brings a lot of competitive excitement to the wealth of gameplay modes that will launch day one in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Multiplayer, a package that includes favorites like Team Deathmatch, Domination, Hardpoint, and the return of large-scale battles with Skirmish. But with Overload we get a fresh new toy to play with, one that mixes in a variety of community favorites like Capture the Flag and Uplink into a singular new experience.
Here, two teams of six square off to fight over an Overload Device that must be escorted into enemy control zones to score a point. Once a team has picked up the device, they’ll appear on the HUD and Tac-Map for all players to see, and only one device will spawn on the map at a time – so expect some high stakes firefights surrounding the device once it spawns in. As a support, you can help escort your teammate to the enemy controlled zones, whereas the opponents want to stop them from doing so. Teams will switch sides at “half-time” and the first one to score 8 points, or whoever has the highest score once the clock expires, wins.
“Overload started with a real desire to create a new competitive mode,” explains Design Director Matt Scronce. “Of course we’ve got the favorites – Team Deathmatch, Domination, Hardpoint, Kill Confirmed – but the team really wanted to push on a Call of Duty competitive mode. Treyarch has a long-standing support and pedigree with the competitive community, and it started with how we can make a new mode work with the competitive players across the community and the Call of Duty League on supporting that. How can we make it the best? That’s where it started.”
As I learned during our discussion around this new mode, when the team sits down to start working on the creation of a competitive mode like Overload, it starts by establishing a different set of governing rules as opposed to making something that will have a wide-ranging appeal. They’re looking at establishing factors like how it can encourage team play, and how it can utilize new gameplay mechanics like Active Camo or the Overclock system, for example. It also comes down to which community they’re trying to serve – in this case, it was to give the competitive community something new.
As Scronce tells me, the initial pitch for Overload was to create a new, objective-based competitive mode, something that could be played 6v6 but scaled down to 4v4 for Call of Duty League. It also needed to have an objective in the map that can be picked up and carried, and this came from inspiration from previous modes that they’ve done like Capture the Flag, Uplink, Search and Destroy, and Sabotage.
“We looked at all of them, ranging back to… 2007? We looked at everything we’ve done, because we’ve done a lot,” adds Scronce. “And we can see what worked here, what didn’t work there, and what do we think we can add to make it kind of fresh and work with Black Ops 7? Obviously, we’ve got the next-level Omnimovement and wall jumps. And some of our new 2035 era of gear, guns, and gadgets – we’ve talked a lot about how those can fit and make sense in Overload.”
One example the team is mulling over is how someone using the Active Camo Field Upgrade, where I can deploy camouflage, should be able to pick up the objective and remain camouflaged. “That’s just one very specific example of something, like the rule set of ‘should you be able to remain in Active Camo and hold the objective’ – the answer right now is yes, because it’s fun,” says Scronce.
Playing Overload, I really do get the sense that this is a great fusion of competitive teamplay, but also a lot of fun. It creates a constant series of mini objectives throughout a match that I must consider, which really keeps me engaged: anticipating where a chokepoint might be, the best route to track down an enemy carrier, or where to set up shop to take out enemies who are lured to a device location.
“We had the pro players in recently and they were very loud in playtesting,” says Senior Director of Production Yale Miller. “The noise they were making was ringing through the studio. We’ve been working so hard on Black Ops 7 and we’re very proud of it and we want people to love it. So, when we hear people having fun and hollering and WTFs and all that – that’s music to our ears.”
Teamplay and communication are keys for success in Overload, ensuring you’re all on the same page of when to push to the objective, or being able to grab the device if someone goes down. Or just simply having a teammate nearby who can come in and back you up.
“If you’re a lone wolf you might get hung out to dry,” adds Miller. “It really forces that kind of team dynamic where suddenly people are talking because they kind of must, right? To be successful, you must be like, ‘Let’s go, we’re all going to push together,’ versus if you’re pushing by yourself, you’re probably in trouble. Forcing that teamwork is key because of the objective.”
And this dynamic plays out evenly on both sides – evidence that the team at Treyarch really seems to have been able to tap into a competitive (and fun) mode for players. Overload rounds out a great list of modes launching with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 that really pluses up the entirety of its Multiplayer package that the team is really excited for.
“At the end of the day, it’s one of 10 key multiplayer modes. And then obviously we have Zombies, and our Co-op Campaign for the first time,” says Miller. “It’s part of the whole package, and we think for us a lot of what we talk about is what’s the full package of Black Ops 7 and making sure that we’re hitting everything. You can’t really beat the value in our minds.”
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 launches November 14, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox on PC, and Cloud – with support for Xbox Play Anywhere and day one with Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass – as well as PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Battle.net, and Steam. Pre-order any digital edition or subscribe to select Game Pass plans to receive the Reznov Challenge Pack and Guild Override Weapon Camo for immediate use in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone (Terms).
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