Call of Duty: Warzone surfaced in 2020 as a free-to-play battle royale of epic proportions. Within just a few days, it had secured tens of millions of players worldwide, and it became known as one of the best games in the genre. Unfortunately, the game didn’t stand up well to the test of time, and after a couple of years, too many bad decisions were made, and players started rapidly abandoning the title.
Given that times have changed and players are still moving on, is Warzone being shut down? Activision won’t support a ‘dying game’ forever, but is Warzone going to be discontinued?
Join me as we find out the answer to that question.
Is Warzone Dying?
In 2025, a prominent Call of Duty leaker revealed that the revival of Verdansk – due to take place in April 2025 – is the last-ditch effort for Activision to bring players back to Warzone.
It was mentioned that if Verdansk isn’t a success and players aren’t retained, then Warzone will be shut down before Call of Duty 2026 arrives.
This comes as Warzone struggles under the weight of network issues, a plague of cheaters, and lacklustre updates that haven’t given the community a sense of hope for the future of the iconic battle royale.
The esports scene for Warzone is wavering; streamers are abandoning the game for other battle royales, and players worldwide are losing faith in the platform at large.
When you ask if Warzone is dying, you can just look at the streaming figures for the game:
Warzone’s performance on streaming platforms like Twitch is at an all-time low. The peaks we’re seeing now are lower than ever before, which is a telling indicator that the game is dying.
Is Warzone Being Discontinued?
Presently, Warzone isn’t being discontinued, but there’s a very real possibility that it will be within the next year or so.
If the leaks are to be believed, Verdansk is the last shot developers have at making Call of Duty: Warzone an ongoing success. It’s an attempt to revive the player base and bring millions of users back onto the platform. If it fails, Warzone could be shut down by the end of 2026.
It hasn’t been said if Warzone Mobile will be shut down, though. This speculation is in reference to the ‘main’ version of Warzone on console and PC.
What will you do if Warzone is shut down? Let us know in the comments.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the claim that COD 2026 is being developed for the next Xbox
I think its a good idea bringing verdansk warzone back, however if they had listened to the player base when they withdrew verdansk, to reinstate verdansk warzone, the player base would be significantly better. Let’s hope that it will be the revival of the game with verdansk warzone back, and let the maps remain, so the player is able to choose the maps they want to use… viva verdansk… forever.. from pancake (loud squad)..
Activision has been putting on a clinic over the last 4 years on how to take the perfect recipe for success and make every single bad decision multiple times a year to ruin it for everyone.
I truly love Warzone and have sunk more hours into it than I would like to admit. I want nothing more than to see it succeed but there’s a caveat there. It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up by people that play the game and not the people that write the cheques.
There are multiple games that have surveys on potential changes to the game as well as reviews of recent changes to see how they have been recieved. If the devs listened to the player base back when caldera was released, the game could still be going strong.
Instead we get a glitchy game with the most suspicious SBMM/EOMM and the crappiest anti cheat.
I wonder what would happen if a small independent studio took it over and slowly improve it.
This has been CODs biggest down fall: not listening to the player base. Why would you not listen to the very people receiving your product and apply that to your work? That’s like going to a restaurant and the chef not accepting your request to remove a condiment or ingredient from your meal selection, thus forcing you to eat it as they want to make it and having to pay for the meal or LEAVE and go somewhere else where they accept such request. And that is exactly what is happening to Warzone in a nutshell: we told you no pickles and you still forced us to eat it, now we will go where pickles can be removed if ALOT of people ask for it smh, hope they can get it together but if we’re at this point of questioning shut down- it may be too late.
I will be sad. It has been a way of staying in contact with old friends and having fun playing a shooter game. But over time.e it has become increasingly riddled with cheaters and gameplay changes have made it unnecessarily difficult for a casual player to compete.
The notion they would let a billion dollar title die for a lack of providing a functioning anti cheat and SBMM system is mindblowing
As a player with 8 different teammates and none of wich play anymore do to cheating. I don’t think it’s fixable now .
The cheaters and your way of thinking don’t cuss or you will be banned. Cod your game characters cuss and not to mention the game is for mature 17 plus hello, why ban people freedom of speech chat banning is not right. I think if a parent chooses to let their kid get on a game that’s for adults then they accept all that comes with it. Not even going to mention the cheaters.
I think they need to bring back DMZ. I like the bots and quick missions and challenges better than free for all. Mostly because I don’t have a shot at winning in free for all.
Warzone should be shut down an bring back black out if not the cut it completely because the download way too big and the game is crap after I deleted the game I was able to download 7 different games with cod I only had 3 games but the community could agree cod is no longer a fun game y’all f up big time
And posting on Ninja turtles game mode yeah Im happy I deleted the game.