Warzone Mobile devs explain reason for bigger lobbies amid player complaints

Eleni Thomas
Warzone Mobile official screenshot

Warzone Mobile devs admit there are no “technical limitations” surrounding PC and console lobbies increasing to 120 players, rather they simply choose not to increase the number.

Warzone Mobile allows gamers to dive into the franchise from the comfort of their phones. Making access to the Warzone experience easier and quicker than ever before.

While Warzone Mobile does bear a strong resemblance to its PC and console counterparts, one particular aspect of the Mobile version is garnering major attention online. Namely, the fact that the lobby size for games has increased from the PC and console size of 100 to now allow 120 players to drop into a game.

For PC and console users, this increase in lobby size has caused online backlash, with many players calling out the devs on why they don’t increase the size of the PC and console lobbies too.

In light of this online discourse, Chris Plummer, Senior Vice President and Co-Head of Mobile at Activision Publishing, sat down with IGN to discuss the changes to lobby sizes.

“When we got on the Call of Duty tech and that was working, and now we have access to Demonware backend and all this kind of optimization has happened over 20 years of COD secret sauce, all of a sudden we can get 120 humans in the same match.”

Plummer then admitted that they do have the capability to increase PC and console lobby sizes but that they actively choose not to.

“I think it’s important to point out that this isn’t a technical limitation in any direction. These are design choices. So the Call of Duty technology supports lots of players. We can support more players or less players in Warzone Mobile, and the same is true on other platforms. 

“The reason you see certain player configurations is purely through design decisions that are made based on checking out how people are playing, where the pockets of action are, where certain things happen in the journey of playing the map, and when it gets exciting or boring or whatever, and player count really impacts that.”

At the time of writing, there has been no mention if the mainline version of Warzone will increase lobby sizes to 120 players. However, we’ll be sure to keep you updated if there are changes or news surrounding this update.

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About The Author

Eleni is a Melbourne-based journalist. Having completed her Bachelor's in communication (Journalism) at RMIT University, Eleni is now a Senior Writer for the Dexerto Australia team. A big Nintendo fan (with a Triforce tattoo to prove it) and a lover of the zombie genre, Eleni covers gaming, entertainment as well as TV and movies for the site. She is also passionate about covering Queer and female representation. Contact Eleni at eleni.thomas@dexerto.com