Bizarre bug grants Warzone victory to last remaining Gulag winner

Theo Salaun

A new bug is keeping players in the Gulag while the circle kills teams on Verdansk, stripping the final team of their Warzone victory and instead giving it to the last winner.

Infinity Ward’s April 28 patch for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone has seemingly brought more problems than improvements. In addition to the nightmarish chat issues and strange plane glitches, the Gulag is now getting overcrowded and ruining matches.

This problem is less obvious than some of the other ones, as it almost feels like a result of chance instead of an actionable error. But some people are getting stuck in the Gulag for minutes, only to find out that they have won the game because everyone else has already died to the circle.

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The Gulag does close at a certain point in each game, but whoever remains in it at that time is still able to complete their duels and re-deploy. It seems feasible that rare matches might end up with enough people waiting for their 1v1’s for the winners to deploy into a tiny circle.

But typically you can only wait a few rounds before your match and, if an opponent isn’t ready, you are granted an automatic victory in one minute. So there is no reason, other than a confusing bug, that a player could remain in there for so long that the circle has entirely closed.

In one particularly shocking example, Redditor ‘Sitech7’ shows the last team alive in a match, the presumptive winners, dying to the circle without anyone to fight – although the HUD indicates four other teams are alive. 

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The team then shifts to spectating, where they get to watch a packed Gulag as each winner re-deploys into the storm and promptly dies. Eventually, the final winner finishes their duel and takes the entire game.

Again, it is possible that this is how things are supposed to work. IW has yet to respond or clarify, and this issue has not made it onto their Trello board for incoming fixes. 

But the Gulag closes a few circles before the final one for a reason: it is not fair for teams that have remained alive and in danger to lose because someone else died earlier and got to hang out before winning a 1v1. It’s a confusing issue and one that we’ll be keeping our eyes on.

About The Author

Théo is a former writer at Dexerto based in New York and built on competition. Formerly an editor for Bleacher Report and philosophy student at McGill, he fell in love with Overwatch and Call of Duty — leading him to focus on esports for Dex.