Modern Warfare 4 is two days old and Infinity Ward is shipping fixes daily. The October 24 round is the first one carrying a line written specifically about Search and Destroy, and a second written specifically about Hardcore. The rest of the drop is stability work, DMZ cleanup and menu bugs. These two are about how a one-life round resolves.
Confirmed. Both lines come straight from Infinity Ward's own Modern Warfare 4 patch notes page under the October 24 heading, and Infinity Ward announced the same fix round from its official account. The notes state what was fixed without saying how far the defuse bug reached or which Hardcore playlists lost the radar, so the fact is official and the scope is not.
What the October 24 notes actually change
- Defuse distance The notes fix an issue in Search and Destroy where players could defuse the bomb from an unintended distance or position. Infinity Ward does not say how much distance, or which sites it worked on.
- Hardcore radar The Portable Radar Field Upgrade was not displaying the minimap while active in Hardcore matches. It now does.
- Rooftops killstreak The Deathstalker could travel outside the map boundaries on Rooftops, which is one of the twelve launch Core 6v6 maps.
- Loadout menu bugs Editing a loadout could put a non-Melee weapon in the Melee slot of the in-game Loadout menu, and DMZ weapon builds could incorrectly appear usable in Core Multiplayer. Both are fixed.
- Prestige and Gunsmith A weapon's attachments were not resetting automatically when you prestiged it in Gunsmith. Infinity Ward also notes that weapon and player prestiging are unavailable while you are actively searching for a match, and says the menu now states that.
Why Hardcore SnD cares
Hardcore strips the minimap. That is the point of the mode, and it is why the Portable Radar is a real pick rather than a comfort pick: it is the only thing that puts enemy positions on your screen. A bug that left it drawing nothing in Hardcore did not merely weaken a Field Upgrade, it removed an entire information layer from the Hardcore loadout, and anyone running it in Hardcore Search and Destroy since launch was paying a slot for nothing. The defuse bug is the worse of the two, because it decides rounds rather than informing them.
- Post-plant holds were unsound If a defuse can start from a position you cannot see or cover, every retake read you drilled was built on the wrong geometry. Rounds you lost on what looked like a clean hold may have been lost to this.
- The Portable Radar is worth testing again Run it through a Hardcore Search and Destroy block now that it draws. A working radar on a slot you were already spending changes what the rest of the kit has to cover.
- Rooftops is in the pool An out-of-bounds killstreak path on a launch Core 6v6 map is a competitive problem, not a curiosity, and Rooftops is in the rotation you queue.
- Daily patches beat locked rules Three fix rounds in three days means a ruleset written off launch week is written against a moving sandbox. Read the notes before a scrim block, not after it.
A defuse from a position you could not cover was not a read you missed. It was a bug.
What is still open
The same notes keep three items in Known Issues. Infinity Ward is still investigating players being kicked while spectating in Multiplayer, which in a one-life mode is most of your round. The regional map animation on the lobby search screen has been turned off deliberately, as a prospective fix for reports of hitching. And PC players can hit a network error extracting from DMZ with a looted Dog Tag. None of the three carries a fix date.
Pull the patch notes before you queue. Infinity Ward shipped a fix round on October 23 and another on October 24, and has said in writing that it is already looking at weapon tuning. A plant spot, a radar read or a weapon pick that held yesterday is worth re-testing rather than assuming.