Embark Studios Responds to Call of Duty Black Ops 7 Censorship

Key Takeaways

1. Activision acknowledged and resolved a censorship issue where “Arc Raiders” was mistakenly filtered in Call of Duty Black Ops 7 beta lobbies.
2. The issue began on October 2, 2025, during the open beta, leading to significant community discussions on platforms like Reddit.
3. A patch was released allowing mentions of “Arc Raiders,” with Activision explaining the filter mistake resulted from the moderation system misidentifying the term.
4. Embark Studios humorously responded to the situation, boosting excitement for their upcoming game, Arc Raiders, set to release on October 30, 2025.
5. Call of Duty Black Ops 7 is scheduled for full launch on November 14, 2025, following an open beta aimed at gathering player feedback.


Activision has acknowledged the censorship issue regarding “Arc Raiders” in the beta lobbies of Call of Duty Black Ops 7. The issue arose from a mistake in the text filter, which has since been fixed.

The Start of the Censorship Issue

This whole Arc Raiders censorship mess kicked off on October 2, 2025, when people who pre-ordered and Game Pass users got to play the open beta for Call of Duty Black Ops 7 on October 5. Gamers were surprised to see that when they typed “Arc Raiders,” it showed up as a series of asterisks. However, typing “Arc” or “Raiders” separately didn’t get censored.

Community Reaction

The censorship sparked a lot of conversations on the Arc Raiders subreddit, which received over 1,400 upvotes. Many players started to wonder if there was some corporate competition going on, especially with the fall shooter season heating up.

Patch and Explanation

Currently, a patch has been rolled out that allows free mentions of Arc Raiders. Activision’s PR Team explained to Insider Gaming that the issue in Black Ops 7 was due to the moderation system mistakenly identifying “Arc” as part of an inappropriate term, which caused the full phrase to be blocked when paired with “Raiders.”

A similar situation happened in the EA App chat earlier in August, where “Arc Raiders” was also swapped out for hashtags. This EA censorship lasted until August 6, when they fixed the filter issue. Speculation is rife that both EA and Activision share the same moderation system, which caused the confusion.

Embark Studios’ Response

Meanwhile, Embark Studios, created by former DICE developers from the Battlefield series, took advantage of the situation with a humorous post saying, “We’re still on track to release on October 30th!” along with a censored promo page.

This unexpected publicity has increased excitement for Embark’s Arc Raiders, a third-person sci-fi extraction shooter set to have an Open Beta from October 17 to 20, with a full launch planned for October 30, 2025.

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 Release Date

On the other hand, Call of Duty Black Ops 7 is scheduled for a full launch on November 14, 2025. Treyarch has started an open beta to gather player feedback on a new playlist, focusing on reduced skill-based matchmaking. This testing phase will run until October 9 and will introduce a new 6v6 map named Toshin. Recently, Activision proudly reported that its Ricochet Anti-cheat system has banned 97% of cheaters, stating, “This is just the beginning.”

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