Modern Warfare 2 brings back classic minimap with a major catch

Nathan Warby
minimap in Modern Warafre 2

The decision to remove the classic CoD minimap from Modern Warfare 2 has been controversial since launch, and it appears the devs have subtly brought it back in Season 2. However, it does come with a significant catch.

When it first arrived back in 2022, Modern Warfare 2 came with some fresh ideas to shake up the CoD formula that players had become used to. It introduced a whole new Gunsmith system, as well as water physics that add an extra dimension to multiplayer matches.

One of the most drastic changes, however, was the decision to alter the minimap so that players can fire unsuppressed weapons without giving away their position.

Now, with the release of Modern Warfare 2 Season 2, players have noticed that the old-school minimap has returned, but only in Gun Game.

The classic mode made its return on February 22, and it didn’t take long for players to notice that it was using the same style of minimap that was present in past games. Each time a player fired their weapons, a red dot appeared to reveal their last known location.

CoD expert JGOD showed the feature in action, along with the caption: “So the Minimap works like it is supposed to in Gun Game?”

It isn’t clear at the moment if this is a bug within Modern Warfare 2 Gun Game that is causing red dots to appear even when no UAV is active, or a deliberate gameplay choice from the developers.

All the way back in the Modern Warfare 2 beta, Infinity Ward justified the minimap decision by saying: “We do not want to punish players for firing their weapons. We also want players to actively search out the origin of a gunshot versus just traveling directly to where the dot is on the mini-map.”

Since Gun Game forces players to use weapons they may not be comfortable with, it’s possible that they decided to bring back the old minimap to ease the difficulty and plan to keep it exclusive to the returning mode.

However, we won’t know for sure until the devs address the situation or release a fix that restores the minimap used in Modern Warfare 2 so far.


For more on Modern Warfare 2, be sure to check out the best weapons in Season 2, and everything we know about the Season 2 Reloaded update.

Image credit: Activision