Editorial policy
Our sources, version notes and testing policy
Every guide about a live-service game eventually mixes official facts with recycled guesswork. This page is the rulebook we hold ourselves to, and the vocabulary you will see in the badges next to each claim on this site.
Source hierarchy
Claims on this site carry one of five grades. The badge sits next to the claim itself, so you can see the strength of the evidence without leaving the sentence.
| Badge | Means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Official | We opened the source ourselves and the wording is on the page. | The DMZ Early Access date on Activision's own DMZ page. |
| Official (via repost) | An official statement we could not open directly, read in a third-party article that quoted it. Consistent across sources, still not first-hand. | The 10 AM PT start time relayed by a guide site. |
| Media report | Reported by an outlet or guide site, not confirmed by Activision. | Storage requirements and the extra update size. |
| Our own test | We did it ourselves and recorded what happened. | A preload walkthrough performed on our own install. |
| Unconfirmed | A single report, or a plausible detail we could not source. We label it rather than drop it silently. | A specific network error code from one player report. |
What we will not do
- We will not publish a ranking we did not observe. Search result orderings are labelled as search-tool orderings, never as Google positions.
- We will not turn a conflict into a consensus. Where two official-adjacent sources disagree — as the October 22 store listing and the October 23 official launch date do — we publish the disagreement and say which one we are following and why.
- We will not fill gaps with the most likely answer. If an item is not covered by official material, it stays marked unconfirmed rather than getting a plausible guess.
- We will not repeat a fix we did not see work as if it were official.
Version and date labels
DMZ early access is a short event inside a live-service game, so version-specific statements rot fast. Every page on this site shows the date its facts were last checked against their sources, and any page with a version or platform dependency says which one it refers to. Where a number came from a media report rather than an official page, the table cell says so.
The date you see is the date we checked the source, not the date the source was published. Both matter, and for a live game they are usually different by days.
What counts as our own testing
When we say "our own test", we mean we performed the action on our own hardware and account and recorded the result, including the failure cases. We do not claim personal experience for anything we only read about. At the time of writing, most of this site is documentation-grade research rather than hands-on testing, and the badges reflect that honestly.
Correction policy
When a correction arrives, we check it against the source, change the page, and update the checked date. If a claim was wrong in a way that would have changed someone's decision — a wrong date, a wrong eligibility rule, a fix that does not work — we note the correction in the page history rather than quietly editing it. Send corrections through thecontact page.
Images on this site
Every image on this site is an official Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 / DMZ asset published by Activision on callofduty.com, in the official Call of Duty blog, or on the Steam store page for Modern Warfare 4. We use them so that a screenshot of a map, a station or a HUD matches the real thing, and we crop or re-encode them for the web without altering what they show.
Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, DMZ and the associated logos are trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. This site is an independent reference guide and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Activision or Infinity Ward. We do not host game files, accounts, keys or any modification of the game client, and we do not link to services that sell them.
Commercial disclosure
This site is independent and is not paid by Activision, Infinity Ward, or any platform holder. If the site carries advertising, that is how it pays for hosting. We do not accept payment to change a grade, remove a warning, or recommend a product. We do not sell game keys, accounts, boosts or cheats, and we do not link to services that manipulate the game client.