Amid Game Closures and a Declining Audience, Call of Duty Is in a Rough Spot — So What’s Next?

Call of Duty fans are inactive digesting the quality that Activision is walking distant from Warzone Mobile, the crippled that was meant to pb the conflict royale into a caller era.

Over the weekend, Activision pulled Warzone Mobile from iOS and Android app stores, with the scope of the crippled being “streamlined" and an admittance it had not met expectations. While servers volition stay online for now, nary caller contented oregon updates volition beryllium issued to the game, and players tin nary longer walk existent wealth successful it.

"We're arrogant of the accomplishment successful bringing Call of Duty: Warzone to mobile successful an authentic way, [but] it unluckily has not met our expectations with mobile-first players similar it has with PC and console audiences,” Activision said.

It’s a brutal extremity for a crippled that intelligibly struggled close retired of the gate. Warzone Mobile launched successful March 2024 connected iOS and Android arsenic a Warzone-specific Call of Duty mobile acquisition that offered conflict royale for up to 120 players, arsenic good arsenic cross-progression with the PC and console Warzone, Modern Warfare 2 and 3, and, aboriginal successful the year, Black Ops 6.

IGN's Call of Duty Warzone Mobile reappraisal returned an 8/10. We said: "Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile includes each the champion elements of Warzone, portion speeding up and streamlining matches and utilizing cross-progression to marque this a meaningful hold of the accepted experience."

Activision’s anticipation was that Warzone Mobile would marque a splash successful the competitory mobile shooter market, wherever the hugely palmy Call of Duty Mobile, developed by Tencent-owned TiMi Studio Group, is already established. With Call of Duty Mobile, which has seen 1 cardinal downloads since launch, gross is shared betwixt Activision and Tencent. Warzone Mobile, connected the different hand, was developed wholly in-house astatine Activision, and truthful the institution received a bigger portion of the wealth pastry each clip a subordinate dropped currency connected a conflict walk oregon a cosmetic.

But Warzone Mobile, which requires much almighty mobile phones than Call of Duty Mobile to enactment well, failed to conscionable Activision’s expectations, and its improvement squad was scaled down when, successful September past year, Microsoft-wide layoffs deed crossed the games business.

Now, Call of Duty fans, particularly those who did play Warzone Mobile, person lamented the authorities of the crippled and so the franchise.

“This crippled simply came retired excessively aboriginal and wanted to beryllium excessively greedy,” said redditor Maddafragg. “It could beryllium seen connected the Reddit videos, a batch of gameplay was not fluid with weird graphics, it could beryllium seen that adjacent if the crippled is playable, the instrumentality struggles to tally it. The satellite of mobile gaming is cursed, it's not conscionable Warzone that's dying. Dead by Daylight mobile and Star Wars huntsman volition besides adjacent the doors.”

“Turns retired mobile games request to beryllium optimized connected astir devices to beryllium successful, you can't conscionable cater to precocious extremity devices and anticipation your crippled win — it won't,” added piegeamorue.

“Greed is simply a unsafe thing. Activision was excessively greedy and erstwhile it leaked that they planned connected sidesplitting CODM successful favour of WZM they fundamentally turned tens of millions of radical against the game. It became ‘us vs them’ and CODM is vastly much accessible than WZM — the nonaccomplishment was guaranteed.”

What's adjacent for Call of Duty, which appears to beryllium successful a tricky spot close now? Earlier this month, The Game Business reported that portion Black Ops 6 launched large precocious past year, the Call of Duty franchise saw its users diminution afterwards, and “more sharply” than successful caller years.

Here’s the applicable blurb:

... the world is that contempt a beardown start, Call of Duty has struggled to prosecute players to the grade it has successful the past. According to Ampere, successful March 2025, Call of Duty had 20.6 cardinal players. That is inactive a immense number, but it’s somewhat little than March 2024, which had 20.8 cardinal players, and good down connected March 2023, which saw 22.4 cardinal players.

The instrumentality of the much-loved Verdansk to Warzone did springiness the conflict royale a much-needed changeable successful the arm, but with the honeymoon play implicit and accusations of rampant cheating erstwhile again dominating the narrative, each eyes are connected Activision and this year’s Call of Duty crippled to spot if the still-huge first-person shooter franchise tin reinvent itself erstwhile again.

Related, determination are a fig of evident datamined gameplay videos doing the rounds that amusement wall-running and adjacent pitchy packs moving successful Black Ops 6. This, immoderate believe, indicates this year's Black Ops 7 volition ditch Activision’s ‘boots connected the ground’ mantra for gameplay reminiscent of Black Ops 3.

They besides added jetpacks lol pic.twitter.com/ZrFxLVfQkj

— Bikou (@Kivikou) May 20, 2025

🚨‼️WALL RUNNING CONFIRMED FOR BO7‼️🚨
There is partition moving successful BO6 presently It is unclear if it's leftover from BO3 that managed to marque it's mode into a glitch done BO6 oregon if it's from BO7 and is near successful the BO6 files. @charlieINTEL @ModernWarzone @Dexerto pic.twitter.com/0FJ0guUIEH

— peter (@viipeter_) May 19, 2025

Activision told IGN its teams are engaged and moving guardant connected a assortment of work, truthful hopefully we’ll spot the fruits of that soon. Microsoft’s yearly June Xbox showcase is astir the corner. Perhaps Call of Duty volition crook up there. And, meanwhile, Call of Duty: Mobile is going strong, but, arsenic we’ve pointed out, it’s not arsenic lucrative a concern for Activision, contempt being bigger.

Activision Blizzard’s caller mobile struggles besides telephone into question Microsoft’s $69 cardinal acquisition of the institution itself, fixed Xbox brag Phil Spencer has made nary concealed that the determination was successful portion motivated by Xbox’s lofty mobile ambitions (Activision Blizzard owns King, the shaper of phenomenally fashionable mobile crippled Candy Crush). Indeed, Microsoft plans to motorboat an app store of its own, taking connected Apple and Google successful the lucrative mobile crippled space.

Wesley is Director, News astatine IGN. Find him connected Twitter astatine @wyp100. You tin scope Wesley astatine [email protected] oregon confidentially astatine [email protected].