Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone Season 2 doesn’t appear to be off to a great start on Steam, as data shows a decrease of over 70,000 players when compared to 2023’s Modern Warfare 3 Season 2 update. Both Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone received the highly anticipated Season 2 update on January 28, but new content and improvements don’t appear to have brought back players who have recently ditched the shooter.

Although Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was a big success for developer Treyarch Studios at launch, with publisher Activision even confirming that it had the biggest launch month in Call of Duty history, the shooter appears to have been on a sharp decline ever since. While official player count numbers for the likes of PlayStation and Xbox are unknown, Call of Duty has lost almost 50% of its players on Steam since Black Ops 6‘s launch in October 2024. With both Black Ops 6 and Warzone tied to the Call of Duty app, it’s unclear which title has been affected more by the drop in players on Steam.

Black Ops 6 Season 2 Launch Was Less Successful Than Modern Warfare 3’s

With Steam numbers at a low point for Call of Duty, there was hope that Season 2 would bring enough content and make enough gameplay improvements to see plenty of players return to the title. However, CharlieIntel recently noticed that the launch of Black Ops 6 Season 2 only peaked at 84,431, a drastic difference when compared to the Season 2 launch for 2023’s Modern Warfare 3, which brought in over 154,000 players. While this is a massive difference between the two entries, Black Ops 6 did shoot back up to the number one spot on the PlayStation Store in the same week as its Season 2 launch. This implies that the title is performing much better on consoles, but there’s currently no way to know the official player count numbers for PlayStation and Xbox.

Why so many players have ditched Call of Duty on Steam remains a topic of debate. With free-to-play titles such as Marvel Rivals becoming a smash hit on Steam, it could simply be that players are looking elsewhere for new gameplay experiences. However, there is also heavy speculation that the sudden decline in players on PC is mainly due to the fact that both Black Ops 6 and Warzone are infested with cheaters, predominantly in Ranked Play. Activision did confirm it would be implementing new and improved client and server-side cheat detections and systems for Season 2, along with major kernel-level driver updates, but players are still reporting issues with cheaters regularly.

The ongoing issue also had a massive impact on the shooter’s Season 2 update, as the publisher revealed that Warzone would receive less content than initially planned. Activision says this was so it could prioritize gameplay tuning, bug fixes, and quality-of-life improvements for Season 2. While Black Ops 6 players were treated to a magnitude of new maps, modes, and features, Warzone players were left with nothing but new Ranked Play rewards, a new perk (with one more due in the mid-season update), and three new weapons.