In a surprise to many of its own players, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare received a handful of new maps. Modern Warfare's support wound down toward the end of 2020 as Activision released Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. A year later, for some reason, Activision has decided to resuscitate the beloved 2019 shooter with substantial new content.
Modern Warfare has (technically) been supported over the last year thanks to the fact the client is required to play the free-to-play battle royale mode, Call of Duty: Warzone. The game's player counts have remained high because of this, but it's unknown how many people are actually playing the game's multiplayer, especially since Modern Warfare has no PS5 upgrade available. This was likely done in an effort to get as many people to jump over to Black Ops Cold War which sports a bunch of fancy features such as 120 FPS on PS5. That said Black Ops Cold War has been taking a beating from fans, given it was rushed out the door in order to meet a release date. It's possible that Activision has seen players jumping ship and decided to incentivize players to partake in Modern Warfare instead with these new maps,
As reported by Eurogamer, the new free update includes a remake of Call of Duty 4's Killhouse, Al-Raab Airbase (6v6), and Drainage (Gunfight) as additions to the map rotation. Interestingly enough, neither Activision nor developer Infinity Ward has officially acknowledged the new maps, not even via some patch notes.
Black Ops Cold War is still getting maps, so there's no need to fear support suddenly being cut off for the current entry in the series, but it's one of the only times that Activision has gone back to a previous Call of Duty game to add substantial new content. Some previous games have been supported with cosmetic content, weapons, or small-scale events, but all-new maps are a pretty massive addition to a nearly two-year-old entry in this franchise.
Some rumors circulated late last year that Infinity Ward may be fast-tracking a sequel to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but new rumors have suggested the series is going in the exact opposite direction. Numerous reputable rumors have stated that this year's entry will be developed by Sledgehammer Games and be a sequel to Call of Duty: WWII. Nothing has been confirmed by Activision quite yet, but it's expected that the new game will be revealed later this summer.
Source: Eurogamer