In case you’re not familiar with the dialogue surrounding Call of Duty in recent years, long-time fans have been pissed at developer Infinity Ward. For years, they’ve ignored community outcry, walked back features the community liked, and even introduced pay-to-win elements to their recent games. Yesterday, Infinity Ward claimed to be listening to “feedback” in regards to Warzone’s The Haunting Event, which is live now, and players are extremely fed up with them.
For context, The Haunting introduced several world bosses to Warzone’s world map that players can defeat to earn rewards. Given that Warzone regularly supports 150 players on its biggest map, Al Mazrah, it can be difficult for a squad of players to take on these bosses without getting attacked by another squad. The player density makes it a bit of a challenge to deal with the bosses uninterrupted.
In an attempt to alleviate this issue, Infinity Ward reduced the player count to 100 and put out a tweet to address the change:
We received feedback that, with all of The Haunting activities in the mix, Massive Resurgence felt a bit too chaotic. To alleviate this, we temporarily reduced the Player count from 150 to 100. This lower Player count retains the welcome excitement of Massive Resurgence, but… https://t.co/9CpbjAKrly
— Infinity Ward (@InfinityWard) October 19, 2023
Unfortunately for Infinity Ward, they chose the wrong words for this tweet. Members of the Call of Duty community were quick to jump down their throats, calling them out for effectively turning a blind eye to the countless complaints that fans and creators alike have leveled at their games in the last several years. Popular creators and sites fired back pretty quickly in the replies:
So now you’re listening to feedback?
Didn’t see people complaining about it being too chaotic anywhere I looked, just complaints that people can 3rd party the pharaoh and the Butcher.
— ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) October 19, 2023
ModernWarzone, a Call of Duty news account with nearly a million followers, pointed out that complaints about the player counts are pretty difficult to find online. CharlieIntel, another well-known Call of Duty news source, chimed in with doubts as well:
Listening to feedback? Really?
— CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) October 19, 2023
IceManIsaac, a popular Warzone content creator with over 500k subscribers on his YouTube channel, called out the players providing this so-called “feedback:”
I really appreciate the transparency (even if it's after the fact) but if players wanted less chaos, they could queue into regular BR Duos/Quads. It still has all the in game events and only 100 players.
P.S. Don't make 100 players the norm for Urzikstan. It's a snooze fest 🙂
— Isaac (@IceManIsaac) October 19, 2023
You can see more angry replies to Infinity Ward’s statement in the tweet replies.
Unsurprisingly, Infinity Ward has not responded to any of the feedback they’ve received on the tweet itself. It fits the pattern they’ve had of ignoring significant complaints regarding Warzone and Modern Warfare 2 in the last year. Managing communication with your community is not an easy task, but when you’re in charge of one of the most popular franchises in the world, it’s vital that you stay in touch with what your audience wants to see. If you can’t keep track of the community pulse, you’re much more likely to end up with a dead game.
Thankfully, the future is looking bright for Call of Duty thanks to last week’s Modern Warfare 3 beta. You can check out our pretty positive impressions of it here.
If Infinity Ward comments on the backlash, we’ll be sure to update this story. Don’t cross your fingers.