Warzone players flame devs for not releasing Zombie Royale at start of Haunting event

Ryan Lemay
Pumpkin skin in Warzone The Haunting

Warzone community members were shocked when The Haunting event started without including its headline act.

Everyone’s favorite Haunting Event is finally back in Warzone. In this year’s iteration, community members can jump into haunted, re-imagined Vondel and Al Mazrah maps. Or squads can try their hand at completing the Soul Capture or Operation Nightmare events.

Players even have the opportunity to earn an exclusive reward in Diablo IV by defeating Butcher as part of an ambitious crossover event. Other highlights of the update include a new field upgrade, loot, and a tactical equipment item.

But what many will consider the star of the show is the return of Zombie Royale. The fan-favorite game mode respawns downed players as zombies, creating absolute chaos. Community members wanted to jump right into the mode when The Haunting Event started, but the devs controversially decided to space out its release.

Warzone players shocked by “drip-feeding” content strategy

This year’s Zombie Royale mode takes the best elements from previous games. Players who die respawn as a zombie with special abilities. It is up to the undead horde to eliminate every player and players that die as a zombie are eliminated from the match. However, an infestation meter fills up and returns all spectators to the match as zombies.

And in true battle royale fashion, the last living player wins.

On October 17, Raven Software unveiled Warzone’s The Haunting playlist calendar, and Zombie Royale doesn’t join the map rotation until October 20. The devs explained that players could try out Al Mazrah or Vondel’s Halloween-inspired maps in the meantime, but that compromise wasn’t good enough for some community members.

Warzone Loadout responded: “So frustrating. Why would you advertise a fan favorite mode as the big update for weeks and then don’t have it at launch? Zombie Royale should have been live directly.”

Warzone competitor and content creator TheTacticalBrit added: “Why would you not have zombies at launch?”

Fellow content creator HunterTV drove the point home by arguing: “You guys can’t do anything right with these playlists.”

Hopefully, the wait is worth it when Zombie Royale finally goes live later this week. But in the meantime, check out the rest of our Warzone coverage.

About The Author

Ryan is a former games writer for Dexerto. Ryan graduated from Ithaca College in 2021 with a sports media degree and a journalism minor. He gained experience as a writer for the Morning Times newspaper before joining Dexerto as a games writer. He mainly writes about first-person shooters, including Call of Duty and Battlefield, but he is also a big FIFA fan.