A broken Call of Duty: Warzone skin is turning players invisible (again)

warzone awoken skin invisible
(Image credit: Activision)

Call of Duty: Warzone players be aware: There's currently an operator skin that can turn players almost completely invisible while using it. The troublesome skin in question is the Awoken operator outfit for Francis, which is unlocked at the maximum level of Warzone Pacific's Season 1 battle pass.

This bug has apparently been in the game since the launch of the Warzone Pacific update in mid-December, but reports of players using the skin to disappear (intentionally or not) have skyrocketed in the past week as more players have acquired the skin through the battle pass. Similar to Warzone's past issues with invisible skins, the Awoken bug seems to be a level-of-detail error that makes the character's body automatically disappear when he's around 35 meters away from you, as demonstrated by streamer BennyCentral.

The only part of the Awoken skin that doesn't disappear is its distinct glowing mask, meaning from a distance, enemy players have to aim at a target the size of the Aku Aku mask from Crash Bandicoot.

Thankfully, the high price of the Awoken skin means the exploit is not likely to become as widespread as past Warzone exploits. Unlocking the skin at level 100 through normal play requires a huge time commitment that most players don't have. Alternatively, you can buy your way to the skin, but it gets pricey fast. Depending on how much progress you've made on the Season 1 battle pass, it could cost anywhere from $50 to $120 to skip to level 100.

You'd be unwise to buy the skin only for this exploit, though. By now, developer Raven Software is aware of the invisibility bug (it's not yet listed on Warzone's issue tracker) and it will likely be fixed in an upcoming patch.

Usually, Raven would disable a bugged skin like this soon after it becomes a problem, but patches and studio communication have understandably slowed as developers have been on holiday vacation. Meanwhile, Warzone players are still facing audio and texture streaming bugs (mostly on the console versions) that arrived with the new Caldera map.

Warzone's rough state comes amidst an ongoing strike at Activision Blizzard that began after 12 QA testers (the department responsible for identifying exploits and bugs) were laid off from Raven last month.

Morgan Park
Staff Writer

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.

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