Following its unfortunate leak yesterday, Activision have now officially announced Call of Duty: Warzone -- a free-to-play "experience" featuring two separate modes, including a 150 player battle royale. It's available as a standalone download, meaning you don't need a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to play.

According to Activision's blog, battle royale sees you "fight to be the last squad standing while escaping the deadly gas in the swiftly closing circle," so pretty much par for the course. There are some unique mechanics included as part of this, including something called The Gulag which sounds particularly interesting:

Upon your first elimination, you will be taken as a “Prisoner of Warzone” and thrown into the Gulag. There you will await your fate and watch other prisoners fight to the death. When your turn is up, you’ll enter the Gulag and face-off against a single opponent in a 1v1 to earn the ultimate reward - redeployment. Win in the Gulag and earn redeployment back into Verdansk. Lose and hope that your squad completes Contracts and earns enough in-match Cash to redeploy you.

There's also another mode in Call of Duty: Warzone called Plunder, which requires you to compete for cash by looting, stealing and completing contracts. All of this takes place throughout the city of Verdansk, which is said to feature distinct landmarks, cities and rural areas, as well as five different vehicles (across both modes) to help you navigate the environment.

Call of Duty: Warzone goes live later today across the world. Here's when you can start downloading it:

Finally, it's worth noting that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare players can benefit in a few ways. Firstly, Warzone works in tandem with Modern Warfare's crossplay and unified progression systems, meaning all progression and content carries over to Warzone and vice-versa. Also, while the standalone version of Warzone is a whopping 83-101GB download for new players, Modern Warfare owners only need to part with 18-22GB, and get access to the game four hours earlier than everyone else.

Will you be downloading Call of Duty: Warzone later today? Give us your first impressions of the new free-to-play game in the comments below.