Insider Gaming: COD Warzone 2 bleeding players at an astronomical rate - down 73% since launch

[Bodycount611]

Warzone 2 Lost More Players Than Expected - Insider Gaming

Since its November launch, Warzone 2 players have stopped playing in droves, leading to a significant userbase for the battle royal title

insider-gaming.com

Twitter user CharlieINTEL, who’s been known to be reliable when it comes to Call of Duty in the past, posted that the Warzone 2 player base dropped far more than expected.


“We’ve heard from multiple people that Warzone 2’s player count dropped over the break at a higher rate than expected,” the post says. “Unclear what it all means for what will change at this point. Hope we get some good updates soon!”


YouTuber JGOD then followed the report up with a chart that appears to show just how big the drop has been since November’s launch. After a peak of 452,093 players on Steam in mid-November, it has fallen all the way to 121,913 as of January 11, 2023. That’s a drop of just over 73% from its launch numbers. Looking at the last month alone, you’ll see that nearly 50% of that last came since December 7.

Bad news for Warzone's future, looks like players have had enough of the COD BR formula.

 

[Deleted member 417]

Anyone watching closely knows COD will be dead/a fraction of its' former self.

Either Microsoft buy ABK and they kill it because they have to, or it dies because the player base will move on to something else

 

[Bodycount611]

i stopped engaging with it last year or around 2020. no point in investing into it when you're unsure if the game will even be on your platform of choice in the future.

 

[Bryank75]

When MSFT finally get ABK but COD has completely collapsed and is worth nothing...

 

[Gamernyc78]

Warzone was always awesome but Warzone 2 changed some things I dont like and I tried to play a few games but it felt off. My main gripe is how thy changed and expanded inventory usage a few months ago but imo it wasnt for the better.

 

[Vertigo]

Modern Warfare 2 is included in player numbers btw. So it’s not just Warzone 2. Also, we don’t have player numbers from battle.net

It fights for the top spot on Xbox. Fortnite was no. 1 again until like two days ago. I sorta don’t see them as direct competitors tho. Long story short… Fortnite is more Mario Kart and Smash than shooter.

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It’s Overwatch 2 to me that’s struggling. 3 months into its launch window and it’s kinda on its way out … Not sure if f2p helped much. Performing worse than Halo on Xbox during its launch window. Keep in mind Halo’s main demographic is Xbox so it held on better on console than pc.

 

[On Demand]

Factions multiplayer coming at the right time.

Jim Ryan will have the last laugh.

 

[peter42O]

I'll be thrilled if COD dies. Overrated as fuck and hasn't been any good since 360/PS3. Then all those studios can move on to bringing back older IP's or create new IP's. Either way, it's win win for me.

 

[Vertigo]

I’m not trying to do damage control for Warzone here but I do enjoy monitoring this stuff. Also I don’t know where I’m going with any of this…

I still want to make the claim that arena CoD is out of fashion. Before MW22 dropped retail CoDs were no longer holding in the top 10 of XBL for instance. Warzone of course did. You could see then that Warzone cannabalized its own players. Players opting to play a free game than a 70$ boxed game.

In tracking Warzone 2 you aren’t just tracking Warzone 2. Modern Warfare 2022 is inlcuded as well. Sorta deceptive. Allows Modern Warfare 22 to claim success but how many players are really just logging in for Warzone.

So this population collapse, while somewhat expected with a f2p launch, isn’t just the collapse of one game … but two.

Unfortunately we do not know how many players engage on battle.net. That’s where CoD is historically played on pc and you cannot expect the entire pc population to have migrated to steam.

Then you have console charts. Warzone 2 is no. 1 right now. It’s been trading with Fortnite for the last few weeks. Seems fine to me…. I would also debate calling Fortnite a direct competitor. Fortnite is something else. It’s Mario Kart. It’s Smash. It’s Minecraft. So technically CoD is still the top BR traditionally.

It’ll be a clearer picture next year when the next boxed CoD comes out and competes against Warzone 2. I have my money on it not hitting hard. Players care far less about arena PvP these days w/ the dawn of BR.

Honestly instead of waiting to see populations dip out of the boxed games just get ahead of it and do arena cod f2p w/ the battlepass carrying over to both arena and br. Forget campaigns. Trust me… no one is really gonna care about losing 3 hour long CoD campaigns most never bother to launch. If you want release campaigns for 10$ as dlc every year or something.

And to those concerned about staying the same setting and timeline etc… well I hear that but seems inevitable.

 

[Remij]

Bubut Sony said it depends on COD! Too big to fail. Nothing competes.