clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Call of Duty’s free battle royale spinoff, Warzone, leaks

Free-to-play stand-alone game rumored to launch this week

Two players battle in a warehouse in a screenshot from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare season 2 Image: Infinity Ward/Activision
Michael McWhertor is a journalist with more than 17 years of experience covering video games, technology, movies, TV, and entertainment.

Call of Duty: Warzone will be a free-to-play, stand-alone battle royale game — and is apparently coming very soon — based on the Call of Duty franchise, according to leaked details from a YouTube video that has since been pulled. Call of Duty YouTuber Chaos appears to have uploaded that video early, seemingly in advance of Warzone’s imminent release. Details on the game were posted to Reddit.

According to an account of Chaos’ gameplay video, Call of Duty: Warzone will support up to 150 players, with solo play as well as teams of two and three. The massive Warzone map will reportedly include other classic Call of Duty maps, including Terminal, Scrapyard, Overgrown, and Broadcast. In addition to a traditional battle royale mode (simply called Warzone), the game will also include a version of the game with respawns called Plunder. The game will reportedly utilize the same jumpmaster mechanic introduced in Apex Legends, letting one player on a squad decide where the team drops on the map.

Call of Duty: Warzone will not require a copy of 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to play. The game is said to support cross-platform play on PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One.

Warzone has long been rumored, and a peek at the battle royale map emerged back in December, due to what appeared to be a bug in Modern Warfare. But the existence of the mode goes back as far as November, less than a month after the Modern Warfare reboot launched.

Update: It’s official now: Call of Duty: Warzone launches Tuesday, March 10. You can watch the first gameplay trailer now.

The next level of puzzles.

Take a break from your day by playing a puzzle or two! We’ve got SpellTower, Typeshift, crosswords, and more.