Activision’s Infinity Ward has confirmed plans to sunset DMZ.
In their latest blog post about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, they shared this message:
“Beginning with next week’s launch of Season 1, DMZ Beta players can continue the mode via the Call of Duty: Warzone section of COD HQ. The DMZ Beta will remain fully playable across all current DMZ content, including Al Mazrah, Ashika Island, the Koschei Complex, Building 21, Vondel, as well as all DMZ missions.
The mode will not be available or interact directly within Modern Warfare III or Call of Duty: Warzone which means that progression and any new Modern Warfare III or Warzone content, including Battle Pass or store bundles, will not sync or carry back into this DMZ mode. Also, DMZ progress will not apply to new Battle Passes beginning with Season 1.
We recognize that not having cross progression with Modern Warfare III and Warzone may be frustrating for some players, but we felt now was the time to take all the learnings from the Beta that we could apply toward future development efforts as we evolve this style of play.
We also know that many players still enjoy the mode and wanted to ensure that everybody can keep playing, which is why we are keeping a variety of content available.
Going forward, development teams will continue to evolve these dynamic open world experiences into the future. We look forward to sharing updates when ready.”
Now, we need to acknowledge that Activision does not publicly share their data about DMZ. The assumption here would seem to be that the mode saw lower player numbers in time, but we can’t corroborate that ourselves.
It is possible that Activision had other reasons for shuttering this mode. For example, if the return of Call of Duty Zombies has proven popular, that may have taken the shine away from DMZ. The studio may have lost interest in DMZ in favor of returning to the zombie well.
Another possibility, which Infinity Ward hinted at, is that they are going back to the drawing board to make a better extraction shooter mode than DMZ. It’s possible that the changes they have decided to make would just make it a completely different experience, so they need to start over.
Extraction shooters are a fairly recent trend, that bigger companies seem interest to jump in on. So far, we haven’t seen many that are as successful as Escape from Tarkov. That may change in the future, but for now, DMZ seems set to sunset.
