Call of Duty’s Krampus Is Demolishing Players & Now They Want Him Gone [UPDATED]

EDIT: 12/21 10:33am PT: Raven Software has announced nerfs for Krampus, reducing his health across all modes, and respective squad sizes. Krampus will no longer spawn after the 4th Circle. Original story as follows.

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Krampus has made an appearance in both Call of Duty: Vanguard and Call of Duty: Warzone for their holiday events, and now players want him gone. Like many online games, both Vanguard and Warzone are hosting seasonal events for players around the winter holidays. Because Vanguard launched just last month, the current event is the game’s first winter holiday event, but what was meant to pose a comical challenge to players has unfortunately made many frustrated with the event.

Vanguard and Warzone’s Festive Fervor winter event launched December 16 and brought Krampus, elves, and other winter touches to the first-person shooter. Though both games have the same event, Krampus and the elves act differently depending on the game. In Vanguard’s new mode, called “Elf Team Six,” players are tasked with hunting down members of Elf Team Six in order to earn overall match score and progress in killstreaks. Krampus appears and fights the player with the lowest objective score. Meanwhile, elves in Warzone yell at players if they get too close, and Krampus targets gamers randomly. Vanguard and Warzone’s Festive Fervor is expected to run throughout the holiday period.

As reported by Kotaku, Call of Duty Warzone gamers have taken to the COD Warzone subreddit to complain about Festive Fervor‘s Krampus. In a 90% upvoted post on the subreddit, user Dyynomight explains the frustration felt by many players:

“Krampus needs to go. Or at least have a time in which he cannot hunt you. I was in a top five situation, and got hunted by Krampus. Completely f—— me over […] Winning is already hard enough, but being hunted by a near impossible being to kill with less than 10 people left is too much. Allow Krampus to only hunt before the Gulag closes. Or just eliminate him all together. I don’t think that level of RNG should be happening in end game.“

At the time of writing, the post has amassed hundreds of comments from players who agree about Krampus, with others branding the game mechanic “dumb” and “stupid.“

The Krampus in Vanguard is not the target of Call of Duty players’ frustrations -it’s the Krampus from Warzone’s Festive Fervor that has been aggravating players. As Warzone‘s Krampus is controlled by a random number generator, he sometimes appears at the worst times. Krampus is also ridiculously hard to beat on top of that. This leads to situations where players will fight their way to a near-win in Battle Royale mode only to have Krampus ruthlessly kill them before they win the game. Thanks to this situation, players are anxiously waiting for the Festive Fervor event to be finished and for Krampus to disappear.

Despite the promise of a permanent reward upon the defeat of Krampus, players are still not happy. Activision has hosted successful COD seasonal events before, like Warzone‘s past Halloween-themed event The Haunting, which has led to further frustrations from players who expected more from the Christmas event. Call of Duty: Vanguard and Call of Duty Warzone developers have yet to respond, and it’s likely too late to make any gameplay changes, but hopefully they’ll take notes for next year’s event.

Sources: Dyynomight/Reddit (via Kotaku)