Highlights

  • Call of Duty's player counts on Steam show a clear preference for recent entries like Modern Warfare and Warzone, but older titles still hold their own.
  • Black Ops 3 remains surprisingly popular on Steam, showcasing the game's enduring appeal with a solid player base almost a decade after its release.
  • Despite being a recent release, Call of Duty: Vanguard struggles to maintain a strong player count compared to older titles like Modern Warfare and Black Ops 3.

Debuting all the way back in 2003, the Call of Duty franchise has only continued to grow more popular with each new entry, and while its recent sales may have dipped slightly due to very valid criticisms, those sales are still monumentally high when compared to the vast majority of other modern-day releases. That being said, while hundreds of thousands of players are still logging into Call of Duty: Warzone and the most recent Modern Warfare games, many fans long for a return to the golden age of Call of Duty, which often sees them boot up some classic entries.

Though its first few entries were well-received at the time, it was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare that really cemented Call of Duty as a household name, something that the next five years or so would only reinforce. Between 2007 and 2012, Call of Duty experienced a golden age where it could seemingly do no wrong. Though the franchise has come a long way since, many nostalgic fans still look back on those days fondly, leading to some rather interesting results when it comes to assessing each Call of Duty game's player count in 2024.

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A Breakdown of Every Mainline Call of Duty's 2024 Player Count

The following data has been pulled from SteamDB, and thus only shows the player counts for Call of Duty games available on the Steam platform.

Title

24-Hour Player Count Peak

All-Time Player Count Peak

Call of Duty

138

207

Call of Duty 2

373

822

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

674

1,796

Call of Duty: World at War

599

4,825

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)

585

22,614

Call of Duty: Black Ops

813

63,343

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011)

481

6,504

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

332

18,277

Call of Duty: Ghosts

126

13,831

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

100

12,675

Call of Duty: Black Ops 3

9,553

63,681

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

356

15,417

Call of Duty: WW2

544

19,406

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (2017)

173

1,409

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)

1,846

3,581

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

1,908

3,693

Call of Duty: Vanguard

351

636

Call of Duty (MW2, MW3, Warzone)

112,006

491,670

It's important to note that some mainline Call of Duty entries are missing from this list. This is because games like Call of Duty 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 aren't currently available on Steam, with the former having never received a PC port, and the latter only being available via Battle.net. It's also important to note that this set of data doesn't take console statistics into account, as active player counts for Xbox and PlayStation aren't nearly as readily available. However, it feels safe to say that some of these games would receive a healthy boost from the Xbox demographic, with the vast majority of these games being available via backwards compatibility.

What Steam's Player Counts Say About Call of Duty's Current Popularity

Unsurprisingly, Call of Duty's most popular entry on Steam is its most recent one, which technically combines Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, and Call of Duty: Warzone into one package. As such, this data is a little skewed, as it's unclear just how many players are actively engaging in each entry, though with Call of Duty: Warzone being free to download, it seems likely that a good portion of that active player count belongs to the battle royale.

A far more interesting assessment is that Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 has the second-highest active player count on Steam right now, at least according to SteamDB. Released all the way back in 2015, Black Ops 3 is almost a decade old at this point, but still, almost 10,000 players are online right now, which acts as a testament to just how much of a complete package Black Ops 3 was, offering a decent campaign, excellent multiplayer, and a thorough Zombies mode.

Another interesting point of data is that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 still have a solid playerbase, while the much more recent entry, Call of Duty: Vanguard, struggles with well under 500 players. Vanguard's active player count is even being beaten by the original Modern Warfare series, Black Ops, and even Sledgehammer's own Call of Duty: WW2.