Optic Scump reckons that Call of Duty Warzone has completely ruined the competitive scene. with high profile influencers partly to blame.
Speaking on the OpTic podcast, the crew were asked a touchy question from its audience. One fan wanted to know, “Warzone could kill competitive Call of Duty multiplayer. Could this be true?”
Despite being cautioned that he didn’t have to say much at risk of running into trouble with their sponsors, Seth ‘Scump’ Abner was happy to oblige the question. He answered curtly, “It already did.
“It’s not like it’s not apparent to everybody. I mean, look at Twitch, for instance. Look at the playerbase. Cold War has, like, 6k viewers, Warzone has [a] minimum [of] 100[k] all the time.”
Another member of the podcast chimes in, explaining that Warzone currently has a tournament every other day with massive prize pools.
“It already did.”
The conversation turns to why Warzone has ended up dominating the competitive space. Members of the OpTic podcast crew seem to think that it has something to do with the amount of big influencer personalities playing it.
“Call of Duty definitely has a huge casual audience that isn’t linked with Twitch and YouTube, but that definitely helps a lot with promotion in general.
“Think about how many viewers they all have and how many friends all those viewers have. It just trickles down as their friends tell their friends and now that’s what everyone plays. So I feel like it does have a big impact, what the streamers are playing.”
Warzone is certainly seeing a huge popularity boost over the yearly Call of Duty releases. Black Ops: Cold War, the most recent Call of Duty release, is currently ranking lower than Skyrim and 2019’s Modern Warfare for viewers on Twitch.
The competitive scene has also seen a huge boost with the introduction of the World Series of Warzone tournament. The first event was a huge success with Aydan’s trio taking the inaugural win.
Alternatively, the more traditional Call of Duty League might have taken a back seat due to it being hosted entirely online for the past year. That’s all about to change this month, though. Crowds are finally being invited back to the event with the Major V tournament in Texas.
Do you think that Warzone has completely killed the competitive Call of Duty scene? Let us know across our social channels.
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Featured Image Credit: OpTic Gaming/Activision