Do You Need Call of Duty HQ To Play Modern Warfare 3?

Not every player likes to use Call of Duty HQ, which has become Activision's launcher for all current Call of Duty titles in rotation. Regardless of which title you own, or even want to play, there's options to launch them all straight from Call of Duty HQ. The issue is, if you're just looking to play a single title, and access it straight away, you have to go through a bit of a process and plenty of different screens just to boot it up.

Naturally, players are more keen to just launch the game straight from their system, like the majority of other titles. So, do you need to have Call of Duty HQ installed just to play Modern Warfare 3?

Is Call of Duty HQ Needed To Play MW3?

Sadly, the only way to launch Modern Warfare 3 is by going through Call of Duty HQ. There's no way to play this new title without having to download Call of Duty HQ, even if you have no intention of playing past titles or Warzone.

It's a pain, especially considering just how much space the launcher takes up. Activision justified the size by saying in a recent blog post, "the overall file size of Call of Duty HQ reflects our commitment for players to bring their inventories and progression with them from Modern Warfare II to Modern Warfare III."

The good news is that you can uninstall aspects of Call of Duty HQ that you don't need, such as separate game files for Campaign and Multiplayer. That said, we can't help but feel like it would be nice if this wasn't the only way to access Call of Duty content.