Call of Duty (CoD) Accounts, Skins und Truhen

Which Call of Duty it is decides most of the price, in the order you would expect: the recent titles — Modern Warfare II, Modern Warfare 2019, Black Ops 6 where it appears — lead, Vanguard and Black Ops 4 sit in the middle, and the games older than that sell for less than a lunch. An account with an older title is a used licence for a game whose player base has thinned; the price says so honestly.

The second axis is how clean the account is, and the sellers describe it in a shorthand worth learning. «Native» or «home» means the original mailbox is included — the one the account was registered with, which is what support asks for and what makes the account recoverable by you rather than by the seller. «Data change» or «changeable» means email and password can be moved to yours. «0 hours» means the game was never launched. Together they are the difference between an account you own and an account you are borrowing.

Region is the third, and on this shelf it is the reason many of the lots exist. Steam and Battle.net accounts are tied to the region they were created in, and where the store does not sell Call of Duty — Russia and some neighbouring markets — an account bought elsewhere is the only way to play. Listings say «region: Kazakhstan» or «suitable for CIS» for that buyer; for anyone else, the region decides which store prices you see, not whether you can play.

Editions and extras add on top: a Vault or Deluxe edition, a second game on the same login, a cross-gen PlayStation licence. They matter between two otherwise equal listings of the same title, and not before.

The title first, because it is the purchase. Filter to the game you want to play — the slices below are one per title — and ignore the rest of the shelf; a cheap Black Ops 3 account is not a substitute for a Modern Warfare II one.

Then the login. A Steam licence and a Battle.net licence of the same game are the same game, but the accounts around them are not: Steam brings Steam Guard and a library you may add to, Battle.net brings a BattleTag and Activision's own account layer. Pick the one you already use, because that is where your friends list and your habits are.

Third, and this is the line that decides whether the purchase holds: does the original mailbox come with it, and can the details be changed. On this shelf «native + data change» is the description of an account you will own. A listing without either is an account the seller could recover, and no discount covers that.

Last, region — if you are buying because your own store refuses the game, check the listing's region is one the game is sold in and the account can log in from where you are. If you are not, the region only changes which store prices you will see later.

The account is recovered through the email it was registered with. On Steam, support returns an account to whoever can prove the original registration; on Battle.net, the same. A listing that does not include the original mailbox is therefore an account with two owners, and the one with the mailbox wins. Read that line before you read the title.

Activision's enforcement is the second risk, and it is specific to this game. Call of Duty bans by account and, for cheating, by hardware; an account that was banned before you bought it is worthless, and a shadowban follows the account into your hands. «0 hours» is the reassurance here — a licence that was never launched has no history to inherit. Ask, if the listing says nothing.

The publisher's terms, like every publisher's, do not provide for selling accounts. What protects you is the mailbox, the password you set and the authenticator you add, plus escrow: the payment is held until you confirm the account opens and the game is in the library.

Change the password, move the email to your own, then add the authenticator — Steam Guard on Steam, the Battle.net authenticator there, two-step verification on PlayStation. Do it before you confirm the order; the confirmation is what releases the seller's money.

Then open the library and check the licence: the right title, the right edition, downloadable from where you are, and — if the listing promised it — no hours on the clock. On Steam also check the account is not community-banned or VAC-marked; the profile shows it.

Listing is free and you receive exactly the price you set: the platform's fee is added on top for the buyer rather than taken out of your price. Name the game exactly, with its year where two share a name — Modern Warfare 2 is a 2009 title and a 2022 one, and a buyer filtering by title only finds you if the title is unambiguous. Then the login (Steam, Battle.net, PlayStation), the region, the edition, and the two words this shelf is bought on: whether the native mailbox is included and whether the data can be changed. A licence with hours on it should say so; a fresh one should say «0 hours».