Since the beginning of the Call of Duty series, players battling across the many multiplayer maps have been given voice chat functionality that only spans to their teammates. This longstanding feature has finally been altered to a great degree in Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 with the introduction of proximity chat. The inclusion gives players the power to use a whole new batch of strategies in order to track enemies or keep their own locations unknown. Here’s what proximity chat does in Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0.

What is proximity chat in Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0?

Proximity chat in Warzone 2.0 enables all players to hear each other from a particular distance — no matter if they are on your squad or not. This means if you or one of your teammates is talking, there may be enemies nearby hearing every word. More impressively, players’ voices will become louder the closer another soldier is, making it entirely possible for enemies to figure out your location only from your chattiness.

This realistic addition can be discovered in the game’s battle royale playlists as well as the more objective-based DMZ component. However, developer Infinity Ward has not said if the feature can be turned off for those who want to keep their chats limited to their squads. It should be noted that Warzone 2.0 is built into Modern Warfare 2, and its multiplayer already allows squads to be in their own private voice channel — so, this may also end up being the case with the battle royale.

No matter, proximity chat can be a life-saving tool for your team while facing elimination in the Gulag. That’s because Warzone 2.0’s reimagined Gulag consists of a 2v2 gunfight held within a training facility that is certainly small enough to hear any and all whispers. However, once you have dropped back into the battlefield, you will have more than enough space to talk privately with teammates, as the Al Mazrah map bears 18 sprawling points of interest.