A blog post from Treyarch reveals plans to release mod and map tools in 2016 for the Windows edition of Call of Duty Black Ops III, their futuristic military shooter sequel. Word is they hope for an alpha release in March:

Over the years, the Call of Duty® community has proven itself to be among the most passionate in the world – and we count ourselves fortunate to make games for you.
We’ve been listening to one of your top requests and are excited to announce that modding and mapping are coming to Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 PC!
We’ve still got a lot of work left to do, but here’s our current plan:

• You will be able to create Maps & Game Modes and more!
• We will include Unranked Dedicated Server Files with the tools so you can run servers with modded content anywhere you choose.
• We will provide an Unranked Server Browser so you can easily find and join servers with modded content.
• Closed Alpha target date: March 2016

Please remember that this is software development, so things don’t always work out exactly as planned. Sometimes features slip or drop off altogether, sometimes they get replaced with other, more awesome features as we hit into limitations of our original plans.

There is much more news to come including updates on Open Beta timing. In order to keep you informed, we’ll periodically publish developer blog posts to share our progress with our fans. Stay tuned to the Treyarch blog for more information.

And yes, this is for real.

Sincerely,
Cesar Stastny
Director of Development