"OK" Hand Gesture Removed from Modern Warfare

Following the Season 4: Reloaded update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone, Infinity Ward has quietly removed a Gesture from the game which depicts a hand signal that is being used to falsely promote white supremacy. The Talk to the Hand Gesture, typically earned by collecting the free Standard Issue III Bundle, has been replaced with the new Crush Gesture - leaving many fans confused as to where their preferred cosmetic has gone.

Around April of 2020, many Modern Warfare and Warzone players were greeted with the Standard Issue III Bundle in their in-game Store, available for free. This Bundle contains Gestures, Sprays, an Emblem, and a Calling Card; The talking point of which was the conspicuous "OK" Hand Gesture that has since been removed.

Now, just over three months later, players have been granted access to the Crush Gesture which closely resembles the Double Time Gesture that is already included in the Bundle. We can confirm that the previous Gesture has been entirely removed from the game's files at the time of writing, meaning that this is likely a permanent change - despite the lack of an official statement from Infinity Ward.

Standard Issue III

The gold standard in what they ‘should’ issue to make life on the front lines more fun.

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This decision has understandably been met with backlash and many players feel that the pseudo-political meaning of the sign never had a place in the game to begin with. On the other hand, following a smear campaign from the 4Chan community in 2014, the symbol has become synonymous with racism and white supremacy in the mainstream media - an understanding bad look for Activision. As the New York Times puts it...

It started in early 2017 as a hoax. Some users of 4chan, an anonymous and unrestricted online message board, began what they called “Operation O-KKK,” to see if they could trick the wider world — and especially liberals and the mainstream media — into believing that the innocuous gesture was actually a clandestine symbol of white power.

Infinity Ward has yet to comment on the matter, but given the Gestures complete removal from the game, it's safe to assume that we will not see it return. This was also the case with 2017's Call of Duty: WWII, which previously featured the "OK" Hand Gesture when inspecting the Type 100's Empire variant.

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