Black Ops 1 and 2 are back on PlayStation. Some competitive tools did not make it.

Activision shadow dropped Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 on PS4 and PS5 on July 9, 2026. No countdown, no big trailer beat, just two of the most beloved competitive Call of Duty games suddenly buyable on current PlayStation hardware. Treyarch and Iron Galaxy built them as straight ports, not remasters, so what you get plays the way it did on PS3 and Xbox 360, with campaign, multiplayer, and Zombies all in the box.

What actually shipped

Both games run 40 dollars each, with separate 30 dollar season passes for the map packs, which is how the full package climbs to around 140 dollars. PlayStation Plus members get roughly half off until August 6, which drops the two base games to about 40 dollars together. There is no crossplay and no legacy servers carried over, so everyone starts fresh. Given how badly the old lobbies were overrun over the years, a clean slate is arguably the point.

Why Hardcore SnD cares

Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2 are not just nostalgia trips for our crowd, they are the blueprint. Black Ops 2 in particular is where a lot of the modern competitive Search and Destroy identity was set, and both games carry map pools that one-life players still quote from memory. A current-gen re-release means you can load a lobby, run classic Search, and warm up on the geometry that taught the mode, without digging out old hardware.

• Search and Destroy is in. Multiplayer shipped intact on both titles, so the core one-life mode you actually care about is playable on PS5 today.
• League Play is out. Reporting says Black Ops 2's ranked competitive playlist did not make the jump, so there is no built-in ladder, only standard multiplayer and whatever you organize as private scrims.
• Theater is out on Black Ops 1. The clip and replay tool competitive players used for reviews and dispute proof is reported gone from Black Ops 1, which changes how you would capture and study a round.
• Fresh servers, fresh unknowns. No carried-over accounts and no crossplay means a clean population, but also an untested one, so lobby health and connection quality are the first things to check before planning around it.

What is not confirmed

The launch and the pricing are settled, you can see them on the store. The exact list of what is missing is not officially documented. The removed modes were first spotted in leaked trophy lists and then reported by CharlieIntel and outlets like IGN and Eurogamer, not published by Activision as a feature matrix. It is also unclear whether side modes like Gun Game and One in the Chamber survive outside the removed Wager Matches wrapper, and whether the ports run with any native PS5 enhancements or purely as backwards-style builds.

What would verify it

An official Activision or Call of Duty support page listing the included and excluded modes for each port would settle the mode question. Short of that, the fastest proof is hands on: load Black Ops 2 multiplayer, check whether a Search and Destroy playlist populates and how the connection holds, and confirm on Black Ops 1 whether Theater and the Wager side modes are truly absent. Until then, treat the classic Search lobby as available but its competitive tooling as thinner than the originals.

The maps came back. Not all of the competitive plumbing came with them.

Sources to review

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 Ports Out Now on PS5, But They Come at a High Cost (IGN)
• The upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops PlayStation re-releases seemingly drop a few fondly remembered features (Eurogamer)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 aren't being remastered on PS5 and PS4, Activision says, they're just being re-released (GamesRadar)