Call of Duty suffers third-worst Steam month despite topping console charts

Call of Duty has started the year with its third-lowest player count ever on Steam in January 2025.

Conversely, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella highlighted Black Ops 6 as the “top-selling game on Xbox and PlayStation this quarter.” He further noted that the title “saw more players in its launch quarter than any other paid release in the franchise’s history.”

Although Black Ops 6 only launched on October 25, 2024, active player numbers across Warzone and previous titles like MW3, tracked through the CoD client on Steam, have steadily declined.

Neither the festive period nor Season 2’s January 28 launch was enough to reverse the trend long-term, making January 2025 one of the franchise’s lowest months on Steam.

According to SteamDB, the game averaged 61,271 players in January, ranking third worst behind July 2023 (60,480) and the all-time low in September 2023 (55,140).

CoD originally debuted on the platform with the release of WWII in November 2017, but did not launch a new title for five years before finally returning with Modern Warfare 2 on October 28, 2022.

Why has CoD player count figures declined on Steam?

There hasn’t been a single definitive reason for the declining player counts in Call of Duty among PC and Steam Deck users on Steam.

However, players across all platforms have voiced growing dissatisfaction due to persistent issues involving cheaters, bugs, and lackluster updates.

Complaints over the past few months have centered around weapon balancing issues, frequent changes to gun mechanics—especially in Warzone—expensive skin collaborations being introduced to the in-game shop, and dissapointing maps, which has been a persistent problem since launch.

Meanwhile, cheaters have been running riot across BO6 and Warzone, such as two major instances from the past few days involving overpowered Wonder Weapons from Zombies in the Battle Royale mode, and hackers disconnecting players in their matches.