You installed a huge update to your favorite Call of Duty game and planned to have fun. Yet, you’re bombarded with constant crashes and getting kicked out from multiplayer servers. All you see on the screen is ‘Dev error 5573‘.
Both Call of Duty games, Warzone and Modern Warfare, seem to be experiencing this after the lates round of updates. The message is cryptic and doesn’t explain anything. It gets worse as the error is titled as a ‘dev error’. That means only a developer is supposed to understand what it means.
What causes Dev Error 5573?
To be honest, we’re not even sure the developers know the real causes yet. Some players report getting kicked out of lobbies before matches even begin, while some report that it occurs at random times within the game causing their system to crash.
One player even reports that anytime they perform a specific action (using flash grenades and loadout markers), dev error 5573 pops up to ruin their experience. There are dozens of more complaints pouring in everyday from players being posted on the Activision forums about this error.
Here are some examples of complaints posted by players:
- Getting the Dev Error 5573 on Warzone. I haven’t been able to log into the game on my PS4 or PC in three days. Activation needs to fix this immediately.
- How to fix Dev Error 5573 on PC when you can even bring up the splash menu? I want my refund on this game and I hope Activision is listening
- How to fix this Dev Error for Warzone. I’ve been kicked out so many times in the lastt three teams so I wasted 30 minutes of playing.
Possible fix for Dev Error 5573
There are a number of possible fixes to this and we encourage you to try them in the order listed. We’ve tried ordering this list so that the easiest fixes are at the top. The only guaranteed fix is a pain to live with, so it’s at the bottom of our list.
Restarting your device
We know, you’re thinking ‘how will this possibly work?’
But, a simple restart DOES work sometimes and it could be how you fix the error.
Lowering graphics settings
This fix is exclusive to PC.
Players speculate that ‘dev error 5573’ error is somehow linked with GPU drivers. Therefore, lower your graphics settings and experiment to see if it persists.
Unequipping Season 1 watches
If you earned the cosmetic watch from Modern Warfare’s Season 1, try unequipping it. Users have reported that simply removing the watch from their loadout has severely reduced the error prompt and in some cases, completely stopped it from happening.
Clearing game cache
This has become a typical fix for many software errors. While it does help in some cases, it doesn’t provide a solid, guaranteed workaround.
This Activision blog post describes extremely well how you can delete the cache on consoles (next-gen and previous-gen) and PC.
Rebuilding database on PS4
This fix is exclusive to the PS4.
We found an awesome guide that details every step of the rebuilding process.
Reinstalling the game
This is self-explanatory. If nothing above has worked for you, try reinstalling the game. The only downside to this is huge download times.
Playing on a different Activision account – The ultimate fix
Because the error is so cryptic, the community resorted to trying all sorts of fixes. One of which has been very successful: playing on a different Activision account.
If you really just want to play the game, you can easily try this. But, if you insist on playing with your main account in which everything is unlocked, we don’t blame you.
The only problem is that you’ll have to wait for an official patch. It shouldn’t take that long since a lot of players are effected by this mess.
More Dev errors
There are a lot of Dev errors going on around right now and we’ve covered a few of them. You can read them here:
I love understanding how different technologies work and explaining them to people. From tech guides to opinions, everything is interesting to me. Other than that, I enjoy writing about various science-related topics and conversing with people.