Call of Duty fans are still brewing the news that Activision is leaving Warzone Mobile, a game intended to bring Battle Royale to a new era.
Over the weekend, Activision pulled Warzone Mobile from the iOS and Android app stores. The game’s scope was “rationalized” and did not meet expectations. The server will remain online for now, but no new content or updates will be published to the game, making players unable to spend their actual money.
“We are proud of the accomplishments of bringing Call of Duty: Warzone to mobile in a genuine way (but), unfortunately, we don’t meet the expectations of mobile first players, just like our PC and console audience,” Activision says.
It’s clearly a brutal end for a game that struggled right off the gate. Warzone Mobile was launched in March 2024 as Warzone-specific Call of Duty Mobile Experience, offering battle royale for up to 120 players on iOS and Android, offering mutual progression with PC and consoles Warzone, Modern Warfare 2 and 3, and Black Ops 6 later that year.
Passthecontroller’S Call of Duty Warzone Mobile Review I returned 8/10. “Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile includes all the best elements of Warzone. It matches, speeds up and streamlines the match, and uses mutual progression to make this a meaningful extension of the traditional experience.”
Activision’s hope was for Warzone Mobile to splash in the already established competitive mobile shooter market, the highly successful Call of Duty Mobile developed by Tencent-owned Timi Studio Group. Call of Duty Mobile has seen 1 billion downloads since its launch, so revenues are shared between Activision and Tencent. Meanwhile, Warzone Mobile was developed entirely in-house with Activision, so the company received a bigger money pie every time a player dropped cash on a battle pass or cosmetics.
However, Warzone Mobile, which requires more powerful phones than a more powerful phone that works better than Call of Duty Mobile, failed to meet Activision’s expectations, and its development team was reduced last September when Microsoft-wide layoffs hit the entire gaming business.
Now, Call of Duty fans, especially who? did I’m playing Warzone Mobile and lamenting the game’s state and the actual franchise.
“This game came out too early and I wanted to be too greedy,” said Redditor Maddafragg. “You can see it on Reddit videos, and a lot of the gameplay was not fluid with strange graphics. You can see that even if the game is playable, the device is struggling to do it. The world of mobile gaming is cursed.
“We’ve found that to succeed, we need to optimize mobile gaming on most devices. We can’t expect high-end devices to work and our games will be successful.
“Grave is dangerous. Activities are so greedy that when they planned to kill CODM in favor of WZM, they essentially went tens of millions of people against the game.
What’s next for Call of Duty? Earlier this month, the gaming business reported that while Black Ops 6 launched Big late last year, the Call of Duty franchise saw its users have since declined, and was “a sharper” than in recent years.
Related blurbs are:
…The reality is that despite a strong start, Call of Duty has struggled to attract players to a degree in the past. According to Ampere, in March 2025, Call of Duty had 20 million players. It’s still a huge number, but it was slightly less than in March 2024, with 20 million players and 22.4 million players in March 2023.
The much-loved Verdansk return to Worzone gave Battle Royale much needed shots on his arm, but there are accusations that the honeymoon era is over and cheating once again ruled the story.
Relatedly, there are many obvious data-amended gameplay videos that do rounds showing wall running and even jetpacks that operate on Black Ops 6.
They also added a jetpack lol pic.twitter.com/zrfxlvfqkj
-bikou (@kivikou) May 20, 2025
BO7 confirmation has been confirmed
There is a wall running on the BO6. It is currently unknown whether the glitch was able to enter through BO3 remains from BO3, or whether it remains from BO7 in the BO6 file. @charlieintel @modernwarzone @dexerto pic.twitter.com/0fj0guieh– Peter (@viipeter_) May 19, 2025
Activision told Passthecontroller that the team is busy and is moving forward with a variety of jobs, so hopefully they’ll see the fruits of it soon. Microsoft’s annual June Xbox Showcase is round the corner. Perhaps Call of Duty will appear there. On the other hand, Call of Duty: Mobile is getting stronger, but as we pointed out, it’s bigger, but not Activision’s business.
Activision Blizzard’s recent mobile struggle raises doubts Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition given that Xbox Boss’ Phil Spencer has kept a secret that decisions are motivated by Xbox’s lofty mobile ambitions (Actionision Blizzard is the maker of the phenomenon-popular mobile game Candy Candy Crush). In fact, Microsoft is planning to launch its own app store that takes over Apple and Google in a lucrative mobile gaming space.
Wesley is the news director for Passthecontroller. Find him on @wyp100’s Twitter. You can contact Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
