Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launched with its charity pack already in the store, as Call of Duty tradition demands, and this one carries a real Marine. The C.O.D.E. Valor Pack makes Kyle Carpenter, the Medal of Honor recipient who moved toward a grenade in Afghanistan to shield a friend, a playable operator, built with his input rather than licensed from a photograph.

The coverage has led with his wounds, which are real and well documented. The detail that matters to a buyer sits in smaller type on Activision’s own page: what the pack costs is not what the veterans receive.

What the Valor Pack puts in Modern Warfare 4

The official listing is specific. The pack contains an operator named Valor, an operator skin called Relentless, two weapon blueprints (an M4 assault rifle and a Rezi 12 shotgun), a combat knife melee blueprint, a weapon charm, a sticker, a calling card, an emblem and a loading screen. The items reach Call of Duty: Warzone when Season 1 starts, not on launch day.

It costs $19.99 or the local equivalent. The page’s store links cover Xbox, PlayStation, Battle.net and Steam. It lists no Nintendo storefront, although the game itself launched on Nintendo Switch 2.

“All proceeds” is not what the official page says

GameSpot, which broke the launch-day story, writes that all proceeds from the $20 bundle go to the Endowment. Activision’s wording is narrower: “100% of Activision’s net proceeds for this pack will go to the Call of Duty Endowment.” It used the same phrase for last year’s Black Ops 7 pack.

The difference is the storefront. Dan Goldenberg, the Endowment’s president, laid out the model to GamingTrend: once a pack goes on sale and the store takes its cut, everything left over goes to placing veterans in jobs, and Activision pays the charity’s operating expenses. None of the official material says how large that cut is. The arrangement is honest. The price on the tile is not the donation.

What the remainder buys has a record behind it. The Endowment, co-founded in 2009 by Activision Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick and retired Marine General James L. Jones, funds nonprofits that place U.S. and U.K. veterans in civilian careers. At its 16th anniversary last November it reported 165,000 placements and set a target of 200,000 by 2030.

The Marine in the pack, and the one beside him

Carpenter was a lance corporal with the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, when, on November 21, 2010, he and Lance Cpl. Nick Eufrazio were holding a rooftop security post in Marjah, in Helmand Province, under a grenade attack. His citation says he moved toward the grenade that landed in their position and absorbed the brunt of the blast. This week’s stories cast Eufrazio only as the man he saved; Task & Purpose notes that Eufrazio was severely wounded too.

Carpenter was unconscious for five weeks. He lost his right eye and most of his teeth, his jaw and right arm were shattered, and GameSpot counts about 40 surgeries on top of the brain operation that removed shrapnel. He was medically retired as a corporal in 2013 and received the Medal of Honor at the White House on June 19, 2014. He is the youngest living recipient, and the Navy has announced a destroyer that will carry his name.

He is more than a face on a skin. The official page says the pack was created in close collaboration with him, the announcement video shows him being scanned in 360 degrees, and the Endowment has released the first episode of Forged in Valor, a three-part series on how the pack was made. His own summary, from that announcement video, strikes a different note from the headlines: “No matter how wrecked your world gets, the world keeps spinning.”

A Call of Duty ritual that Battlefield 6 now runs too

The charity pack is annual. The 2019 Modern Warfare reboot sold the Fearless Pack, modeled on the kit Army veteran and Medal of Honor recipient Florent Groberg wore in Afghanistan. Black Ops 7 honored Purple Heart recipient Danielle Green last November and former Navy SEAL and astronaut Chris Cassidy this year. Battlefield 6 now does the same: three Marine veterans of the 1st Raider Battalion lent their faces and their motion capture to its latest season, Task & Purpose reports.

For Activision, the Valor Pack is the one item in a launch-week store that comes with a ledger attached, sold alongside a game sitting at 84 on Metacritic. Military shooters now compete on whose real service members they can put on screen.

Buy it for Carpenter. If the point is the veterans, the same official page that sells the pack carries a Donate Now button: the skin is the souvenir, and the donation is whatever survives the checkout.

Tags: Activision, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Call of Duty Endowment, Kyle Carpenter, video game DLCs