With glitches like one-way gunfire blocking windows still plaguing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare players, it can sometimes seem like fans of Infinity Ward's first-person shooter are caught between a rock and a hard place when looking for fair firefights. Reddit user Depressionismynameso found the idiom could be taken to a very literal degree when they and a number of other players were spawned inside of a rock wall on the Karst River Quarry map during a Ground War match.
In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the Ground War mode drops 64 players (split into two teams) on a large map and has them aim to capture a number of key locations to earn points. It's an evolution of a game mode first introduced in 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare that has been retrofitted and grown from a paltry 12-to-18 player cap.
The clip of a clearly game-breaking Ground War bug was posted to the r/modernwarfare subreddit by Depressionismynameso Tuesday and received a response from Infinity Ward's Senior Communications Manager Ashton Williams, who said she "appreciate[s] the video" and sent it over to the appropriate department. Williams joins a number of other developers doing damage control on social media, like when Art Director Joel Emslie addressed a platinum camo glitch last month.
Ground War has been somewhat of a bastion for glitches in particular, perhaps because of how many active players and environmental set pieces the game needs to keep track of at once. Issues range in severity but occur across seemingly all maps, like an instant kill zone recently discovered on Port of Verdansk.
The large-scale Domination game mode bears a resemblance to the modern trend of battle royale games, made popular by titles like Epic Games' Fortnite. However signs point to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare adding a battle royale mode soon, and perhaps the extra time it has taken to develop since launch will mean a less buggy experience for players.
Given the first-person shooter's track record with bugs and glitches thus far, it's unlikely the potential new mode will be perfect. That said, the game continues to be popular and successfully launched an esports-focused Call of Duty League on YouTube Gaming last month, so at least it's nice to see developers quickly responding to the issues their players find.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.