Call Of Duty Users At Three Year Low, Millions Leaving The Game

Call of Duty may seem like an invincible franchise, and for the most part it is - but it’s not the whole story.

Activision are gearing up to release this year’s highly-anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II on 28 October. The title is set to include a map editor, in addition to bringing back fan-favourite characters and weapons so naturally, people are hyped. In fact, I’d argue that the fanfare surrounding Modern Warfare II is the strongest that CoD has seen in recent years so you may be surprised to learn that Activision’s player count has fallen by millions.

Ahead of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II’s release, check out this incredible ‘Dark Water’ gameplay.

Activision Blizzard have released their quarterly financial results, which includes data on player counts. In June 2021, Activision titles (excluding King and Blizzard) collectively had 127 million players but this fell to 94 million in June 2022. Of course, Activision’s flagship franchise is Call of Duty so it’s safe to assume that CoD players make up a vast majority of this figure. That’s a drop of 33 million players, which I’m sure I don’t need to tell you is a lot. Almost 26 percent to be exact.

This is a three year low for Activision. According to Eurogamer, player count figures last fell below 100 million in 2019 - the same year that Call of Duty Mobile launched.

It’s no secret that Call of Duty: Vanguard wasn’t exactly Activision’s best-received CoD title. In fact, it was reportedly Activision’s worst launch in 14 years. We rated the game a respectable 7/10 in our review, but Activision noted that “World War II setting didn’t resonate with some of our community.” Perhaps Modern Warfare II is the refresh the franchise needs.