Aydan Conrad is one of the biggest competitive Call of Duty streamers with over 3 million followers on Twitch and over a million on YouTube. On March 27, Conrad announced that he intended to take a break from creating content for Warzone 2.0.
“I feel like the game is just super stale right now. There’s nothing new and exciting on it,” Conrad said in a video posted to his Twitter account. ”You know me. I’m a super competitive person. That’s what I’m known for—high rolling wagers, tournaments, and there’s not really any of that on Warzone 2 [currently].” He felt that the tournaments with monetary prizes weren’t frequent or big enough, and that they weren’t filling up. “There’s no new content. It makes it super hard to have fun making YouTube videos.” He then said he intends to stop making Warzone 2 content until season three is underway (likely in mid-April).
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Things are looking dicey for the Call of Duty franchise. People have decided that they’ve had enough, and one of the biggest Warzone content creators is one of them. The publisher revealed last year that the series had been bleeding tens of millions of players since Vanguard launched in November 2021. And fans of the DMZ mode were aggrieved when the season 2 update wiped their saves. The new Al Mazrah map, which replaced the iconic Verdansk from the original Warzone, was widely considered underwhelming. And though the smaller, tighter, faster Ashika Island map that debuted in season two helped reinvigorate the battle royale, it seems it was too little too late for Conrad.
Conrad isn’t stepping away from streaming games completely, though. He plans to switch to Fortnite, specifically the new content in Creative 2.0. He said that he enjoyed playing It Takes Two, and that he wasn’t stepping away entirely from Call of Duty multiplayer. He also expressed interest in single-player games such as Elden Ring. So his fans might be stuck watching him play any one of those until he comes back to Warzone. Kotaku reached out to ask what sort of content he’s looking for in the next season, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Season two, which dropped February 15 of this year, tried to fix some of the quality-of-life issues that players had with the first season that may have turned them off of the battle royale sequel. The NPC that appeared in the middle of gulag matches—a bullet sponge known as the Jailer—is no longer present. A “capture the flag” mechanic was also patched in, which determines who respawns during overtime in the gulag. The update also contained some gun balances, improved audio, and a hardcore mode. The developers also added the aforementioned Ashika Island, a Resurgence map which managed to bring some lapsed players back to Warzone 2. But these changes didn’t take place soon enough to keep Conrad.
“I’m not trying to be stressed out or not have fun streaming because of the game itself,” he said.
