Gaming
Call of Duty: Mobile goes gothic for Halloween with WWE crossover
MUMBAI: Nothing says Halloween quite like watching Undertaker suplex a zombie on a haunted Mexican estate at midnight. Welcome to Call of Duty: Mobile’s latest update.
Season 9—Midnight Rumble—launches today with a hefty serving of Halloween content, including the return of fan-favourite modes like Attack of the Undead and Hordepoint. The update introduces night mode on the Isolated map for the first time since 2020, forcing players to adjust their tactics in near-darkness. Hacienda returns as Haunted Hacienda, complete with ghost ships, jack-o’-lanterns and creatures lurking in the shadows.
The headline addition is a limited-time WWE collaboration that lets players fight as wrestling legends including Undertaker. Players start matches with boxing gloves and can transform into WWE operators on winning streaks, gaining enhanced health and signature finishing moves that work from any direction. It’s an unlikely crossover that signals the game’s confidence in experimenting beyond military realism.
The Halloween update kicks off a three-season arc dubbed Black & Gold that will run until the game’s sixth anniversary in Season 11. The campaign starts with Black, bringing back the most popular maps, modes, operators and weapons from the game’s history. Season 10 will flip to Gold with fresh content before the anniversary finale.
Beyond the WWE mode, players can earn free legendary weapons through seasonal events, including the FFAR—Shredder and RPD—Road Mongrel. The battle pass introduces the Sten submachine gun, widely used by British forces in the Second World War, alongside Halloween-themed operator skins like Ajax—Insanely Jacked and Seraph—Witch’s Holiday.
The store update includes a new Mythic weapon draw featuring the Type 25—Deepstar Piercer, two WWE-themed draws for Alexa Bliss and Undertaker, and returning Halloween weapon blueprints in a series armoury. Two previous battle passes—Graveyard Shift and Winter War—are also returning to the vault.
For a mobile game competing against console-quality shooters and battle royales, the strategy is clear: pile on the content, embrace the absurd, and keep players engaged with constant variety. Whether that approach sustains momentum through to the sixth anniversary remains to be seen, but Activision is betting that zombies and wrestlers make a winning combination.
Gaming
MTG gaming chief Benninghoff joins NODWIN board as esports firm primes for IPO
The Gurugram-based esports firm is pursuing a public listing, has returned to profitability and is growing revenues by 42 per cent
GURUGRAM: NODWIN Gaming is moving fast. The Gurugram-based gaming and esports company has launched a pre-IPO fundraising round, appointed UBS as lead adviser for both the round and a subsequent public listing, and landed a heavyweight board director, all in one go.
The new board member is Arnd Benninghoff, executive vice president of gaming at Stockholm-listed Modern Times Group (MTG), who has overseen the group’s strategic investments and portfolio growth since 2014. He is no stranger to building things: Benninghoff has founded and built fifteen companies, served as chief digital officer at ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, managing director of SevenVentures, and chief executive of Holtzbrinck eLAB. He began his career as a journalist at Deutsche Presse Agentur and various TV networks, holds a Diplom-Kaufmann in business and administration from the University of Münster, and previously sat on the board of Edgeware AB.
The numbers back the ambition
NODWIN is not pitching a story without substance. The company has returned to EBITDA profitability and posted a 42 per cent year-on-year revenue surge, reaching $58.5m in the first nine months of FY2026. The pre-IPO round will combine a primary issuance to fund global expansion through organic growth and acquisitions, alongside a secondary sale to give existing shareholders some liquidity.
Akshat Rathee, co-founder and managing director of NODWIN Gaming, said Benninghoff understands “the entire lifecycle of the gaming and media ecosystem, from the boots-on-the-ground reality of building startups to the strategic complexity of managing multi-billion dollar global portfolios.”
Benninghoff, for his part, said the company “sits at the intersection of sports, entertainment, and technology, making it one of the most exciting players in the global gaming landscape today.”
A portfolio built for the global south
Founded in 2014 by Rathee and Gautam Virk, NODWIN has quietly assembled one of the more compelling esports portfolios outside the Western hemisphere. Its properties include DreamHack India and Comic Con India, and it recently acquired StarLadder, the Ukraine-based tournament organiser behind premier events in CS:GO and Dota 2. The company also serves as a long-term strategic marketing partner for the Evolution Championship Series (EVO), the world’s most prominent fighting game tournament, helping push it into new geographies.
Its geographic focus spans South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Backers include Nazara Technologies, KRAFTON, Sony Group Corporation, JetSynthesys, and the founders’ investment vehicle Good Game Investments.
What comes next
With UBS running the books, a board freshly reinforced with European media and gaming expertise, and revenue heading in the right direction, NODWIN is laying the groundwork deliberately. The esports industry has burned investors before with big promises and thin margins. NODWIN’s return to profitability, combined with a real portfolio of owned intellectual properties across gaming, music and youth culture, gives it a more credible runway than most. The IPO clock is now ticking.
