Call of Duty: Warzone has a reputation among its fans for frequent bugs and laggy servers that make playing the game occasionally more difficult than expected. Although Warzone's development team works hard to try and catch problems early, bugs and glitches can slip through the cracks.
In this particular case of the game freezing, fans are still debating whether it is a bug in the game itself or simply a Warzone server issue. Fans have noticed frequent packet loss during high-intensity sections of the game which could easily explain the effects of this Reddit fan's encounter.
Warzone fan and Reddit user Daronh posted an interesting clip that demonstrates a strange side effect to being shot. In the video, Daronh is in a heated gunfight when he seeks cover deeper in his building. Peeking around towards a window, he is caught off guard when another player leaps in and unloads a firey shotgun shell directly into him. What drew Daronh's attention was not his death but the lag spike that coincided with the shotgun's discharge. Although it only lasted for a second, the game itself froze instantly in response to the shotgun impacting his character.
Shotgun Bug! The game freezes when you’re being shot by a shotgun, I managed to capture it twice from CODWarzone
Looking at the kill cam, it is obvious that the player wielding the R9-0 shotgun did not witness the immediately pause in gameplay. Everything seemed normal despite evidence to the contrary earlier in the clip. As seen further in the video, this is not a one time bug, but appears rather frequently when encountering a shotgun-wielding enemy.
Some fans are blaming the gun's Dragon Breath rounds as the main cause of this strange bug. The rounds have a tendency to freeze or cause massive FPS drops when discharged due to the game's immediate need to render the effect. Fans noticed that upon being killed, Daronh's game was signaling a packet loss symbol. Although this could be caused by lag on the client-side, many are blaming the packet loss on the weapon itself.
In a game as detailed as Warzone, there is a level of delay expected for older systems. Dragon Breath Rounds have a firey effect that could easily cause the seen graphical error and game freezing effect. There is no good way to deal with this bug other than documenting its rare appearances and sharing them with the development team. Raven Software and Infinity Ward both tend to fix small bugs quickly, and even more so when large amounts of the community bring the problem to their attention.
Call of Duty: Warzone is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.