Meet the new Warzone, same as the old Warzone.
Activision Blizzard announced that the original iteration of Call of Duty's Warzone mode will be shut down on September 21.
Now known as Warzone: Caldera, the free-to-play battle royale from Infinity Ward and Raven Software is being taken offline so developers can "focus on future Call of Duty content, including the current Warzone free-to-play experience." The current 2.0 iteration of Warzone is said to be unaffected by this shutdown.
Caldera first launched in 2020, months after the release of Infinity Ward's 2019 reboot for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Within a year, it exceeded over 100 million downloads, and was connected to include 2020's Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and 2021's Call of Duty: Vanguard.
Last fall, Raven released the final major update for Caldera, which indicated it would be retired at some point in the near future.
It was also confirmed that after September 21, purchased Caldera content from those three games will still be accessible in their respective ecosystems.
With 2022's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Infinity Ward and Raven launched Warzone 2.0. Like its predecessor, it doesn't require a specific game to play, and is fairly popular.
Caldera lasted around three years, with an individual story arc for each annual Call of Duty title. Depending on how the game (reportedly from Sledgehammer) is handled, the battle royale may receive a new version once every three years.
One interesting wrinkle in all this is that Activision Blizzard is still working on a mobile equivalent for Warzone. Should it release in the middle of Warzone 2.0's lifetime, it would raise the question: will that, too, get phased out to make way for a new version years down the line?
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