How to Fix Warzone Dev Error 5573: “Game Data Is Corrupt” Crash

You load into Warzone, the map starts to come together, and then — freeze, desktop, and a cold little popup: Dev Error 5573. Game data is corrupt. No loading bar, no mercy. You relaunch, it loads a little further this time, then the same popup. Sometimes it strikes on the very first screen, sometimes only when a specific map or mode tries to load — and the randomness is the maddening part.

In plain English, dev error 5573 is Warzone's way of saying it tried to read a piece of its own data and found it broken — a shader, a texture pack, a settings file, something in the game's data pipeline that doesn't pass inspection, so the game bails rather than load garbage. The good news: this is a data problem on your own PC, not a server outage and not a ban, and it is fixable with tools you already have. The fixes below run from the quickest wins to the deeper repairs, so work top-down and stop when the crashes do.

What does dev error 5573 actually mean?

Every time Warzone starts a match, it streams a mountain of data: map geometry, weapon models, shaders that tell your GPU how light behaves, and your own settings. Each chunk is checked as it loads. Dev error 5573 fires when one of those chunks fails its check — the data doesn't match what the engine expects, so Warzone declares it corrupt and exits.

This is why the error behaves so randomly. If the broken chunk belongs to a specific map texture, the game dies only when that map loads. If it's in a shared shader file, it dies on every launch. The error is also why where it happens tells you something: crashing during shader pre-caching points at shaders, crashing on one specific map points at map data, crashing on every launch points at config files or drivers.

What causes dev error 5573?

The usual suspects, from most to least common:

• Corrupted game files — an interrupted update, a dropped connection mid-download, or an antivirus quietly quarantining a file.
• Broken shader cache — the post-update shader pre-caching process crashes or gets interrupted, leaving half-baked shader files.
• Corrupted config or profile files — your settings and player files in the Documents folder get scrambled, often after a hard crash.
• GPU driver conflicts — a driver update or leftover fragments of an old driver break the renderer's data pipeline.
• Overlay software — Discord, GeForce Experience, Xbox Game Bar, and recording tools hook into the game and can corrupt the data stream it reads.
• Failing storage or RAM — bad sectors or memory errors silently corrupt game files, usually repeatedly (a red flag if the error keeps returning).

1 Scan and repair Warzone's game files

This is the fix that ends dev error 5573 for most players, because it targets the exact problem: broken data blocks.

1. Battle.net: open Warzone, click the gear icon next to Play, and choose Scan and Repair. Let it finish — it replaces any corrupted files with fresh copies.
2. Steam: right-click the game, go to Properties → Installed Files, and click Verify integrity of game files.

It's free, it preserves your settings and stats, and it takes only a few minutes. If the scan downloads replacements, that was your broken chunk — try launching before doing anything else.

2 Clear the shader cache

If the repair found nothing, the next suspect is the shader cache: the compiled shader files Warzone builds after every update. When that build process gets interrupted, you get exactly this error.

1. Close Warzone completely (check Task Manager — no background processes).
2. Open File Explorer and go to your Documents folder, then into the Call of Duty folder.
3. Find the folder containing shader and cache files (its name varies by title version) and delete the .shd / cache files inside it.
4. Launch Warzone — it will re-run shader pre-caching from scratch. Let it finish completely this time, even if it takes a while.

3 Clean-install your GPU drivers

A driver that updated badly — or fragments of an old driver hanging around — can corrupt the pipeline the game reads through, which Warzone reports as corrupt data.

1. Download the latest driver from NVIDIA or AMD (whichever matches your GPU).
2. Download Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), boot into Safe Mode, and remove the old driver completely.
3. Install the fresh driver, restart normally, and launch Warzone.

This is the deepest fix for anything graphics-related and resolves a surprising number of 5573 cases where the files themselves were fine.

4 Turn off every overlay

Overlays inject themselves between the game and your GPU — and a bad hook can corrupt the data Warzone reads at load time.

• Discord: Settings → Game Overlay → turn it off.
• GeForce Experience / NVIDIA App: Settings → disable the in-game overlay.
• Xbox Game Bar: Windows Settings → Gaming → turn off the Game Bar and background recording.
• MSI Afterburner / RivaTuner: disable the on-screen display, or close them entirely while testing.

5 Reset Warzone's config files

If the game dies on the very first screen, before any match data loads, the corruption may be in your files rather than the game's.

1. Close Warzone completely.
2. Go to Documents → Call of Duty and find the players folder.
3. Rename the folder (e.g. players_backup) instead of deleting it — this preserves your settings if you need them back.
4. Launch Warzone. It generates a fresh, clean set of config files.

If the error disappears, your old config was the culprit. Rebuild your settings manually rather than copying the backup back — the corruption travels with the copy.

6 Lower the settings that stress the data pipeline

Some corruption only surfaces when the engine is forced to stream heavy assets. Reducing that load can both stop the crashes and reveal the broken files are in the high-end asset packs.

• Turn off on-demand texture streaming in graphics settings.
• Lower texture resolution and shadow quality a notch.
• Keep spot cache size at its default rather than ultra/high.

These aren't permanent sacrifices — they're a diagnostic. If the game stabilizes, the corrupt data lives in the high-resolution asset path, and a reinstall of those packs (Fix 7) settles it for good.

7 Reinstall Warzone as a last resort

If everything above failed, the nuclear option is a full reinstall. It guarantees every data block is written fresh — no half-fixed repairs, no lingering shader fragments.

1. Uninstall Warzone from Battle.net or Steam.
2. Delete any leftover Call of Duty folders in Documents (back up anything you want to keep first).
3. Reinstall to a drive with plenty of free space — a nearly-full drive is itself a corruption risk.

Quick checklist before you launch

• Scanned and repaired game files — replaced any broken chunks.
• Cleared the shader cache — let pre-caching finish uninterrupted.
• Clean-installed GPU drivers — no old-driver fragments.
• All overlays disabled — Discord, NVIDIA, Game Bar.
• Config files reset — fresh player folder generated.
• Heavy streaming settings lowered — at least for diagnosis.

Frequently asked questions

For most players, dev error 5573 ends at Fix 1 or Fix 2 — a scan-and-repair or a rebuilt shader cache, and the crashes are simply gone. The lesson worth internalizing: this is a broken-data problem, not a hardware death sentence, so work the list before touching your wallet. And while Warzone re-caches its shaders, the free browser games here on GameAdda need zero shaders, zero updates, and zero repair scans. 🎮