'Modern Warfare 4' Has Officially Solved Call of Duty’s ‘Clowny Skins’ Problem

Published Sep 24, 2026, 2:16 PM EDT Elijah is a freelance news writer at Polygon. He was an associate editor at The A.V. Club and Paste, and has been featured in outlets like Game Informer, Fanbyte, Unwinnable, and more. He loves media in all forms, from fighting games and horror flicks to slow cinema and visual novels. He's from the Greater Boston area. Modern Warfare 4 will let players turn off its silly skins (sort of). Image: Activision Sign in to your Polygon.com account Call of Duty fans will finally get one of their most requested features (and no, it isn’t the removal of skill-based matchmaking). Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will introduce a new Operator Skin toggle in its first season, letting players turn off the types of goofy skins they have been complaining about for quite a while. At the same time, the studio also wants to accommodate players who like the previous skins by adding a Carry Forward feature that lets players transfer previously earned and purchased content. The blog post announcing the news shows the feature in action and explains that if the switch is on, any skins from previous Call of Duty games will be replaced with the default operator look. Turning the toggle on will only disable skins for your game, not for other players, and it's off by default. Unfortunately, this news comes with a caveat: the change will apply only to Call of Duty: Warzone, and it won’t affect any new skins added with Modern Warfare 4. For those unaware, Warzone is Call of Duty’s battle royale mode, and it has appeared in several series entries, including Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops 6, and Black Ops 7. While this toggle is limited to Warzone,Infinity Ward has already promised that Modern Warfare 4 won’t have “clowny” crossover skins. “No Lady Gaga. No Omni-Man. No Teletubbies. No SpongeBob. Keep the receipts,” the Call of Duty Community Teams account wrote on X. Why have Call of Duty skins become controversial? Over the last few games, Call of Duty has increasingly leaned into crossover skins, some of which are outright ridiculous: Godzilla, Gundam mechs, and Beavis and Butt-Head could be seen next to celebrities like Kevin Durant and Nicki Minaj. Since these skins carry over with Warzone, the absurdity has compounded over time. While previous Call of Duty games have made promises about not including silly skins before breaking them, Infinity Ward has been going out of its way to distance itself from previous games’ cosmetics. The pivot is likely an attempt to appease the core fanbase. Black Ops 7 was the most unpopular Call of Duty game in a long time. Meanwhile, Xbox, which owns the series, has been in a bad position, having laid off more than 1,800 employees in the last few months. Microsoft is clearly desperate for Modern Warfare 4 to be a hit, having already offered several open betas to bring in players, while continuing its tradition of hiring famous actors to play villains (in this case, Mads Mikkelsen). We’ll see if the company stays true to its pledge for "no clowny skins" after Modern Warfare 4 releases on Oct. 23, 2026.