Warzone Caldera to shut down in September

Call of Duty’s first battle royale is going offline for good

Marco Wutz | Jun 23, 2023

Warzone Caldera to shut down in September /

Activision has announced that Warzone Caldera, the current iteration of the original Call of Duty battle royale game, will be shut down September 21, 2023.

Call of Duty: Warzone released on March 10, 2020, as part of 2019’s remake of Modern Warfare and proved to be hugely popular. Warzone was subsequently expanded with content from Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard, even housing a crossover with King Kong and Godzilla. After the launch of its sequel, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0, on November 16, 2022, the game was renamed to Warzone: Caldera, but remained available for players who preferred the old experience and wanted to continue playing with all the content they had unlocked or purchased over the years.

Those looking for a Call of Duty battle royale experience won’t have any other choice than going over to Warzone 2.0 after September 21. In the official announcement of the move, Activision argued that the resources used to maintain Warzone Caldera will be better spent on upcoming titles.

“Players should prepare for even more Warzone content across consoles and PC, as well as a new era of Battle Royale on the go with the launch of Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, which includes a shared Battle Pass and cross-progression. The Call of Duty team and Studios look forward to sharing more details soon,” Activision wrote, promising additional content for the future. The shutdown of Warzone Caldera, the company noted, wouldn’t have any impact on Warzone 2.0.

Purchased content from the three Call of Duty games included in Warzone Caldera like skins or operators will continue to be available in those three titles, but not in Warzone 2.0, which runs on a different engine and did not allow players to transfer over their inventories from the original.

Published Jun 23, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg