The parent company of Call of Duty, Activision Blizzard, recently provided information about finances and player numbers in its first quarter report for 2022. It was noted that especially the games of Activision are suffering from a significant decrease in players – CoD lost 50 million players in a year. MeinMMO looks into what’s behind this.
Publisher and stock company Activision Blizzard has reported on revenues, profits, and player numbers in its latest financial report and had to accept some setbacks in key metrics over the past year.
The number of monthly active players for Activision’s titles fell to around 100 million. That’s around 50 million fewer than in March 2021:
The so-called “MAUs” (Monthly Active Users) represent an average value and do not differentiate between game and platform for Activision’s titles. A player can therefore be counted more than once in the statistics.
However, since Blizzard and King are listed separately and Activision itself hardly distributes other major games, the numbers can almost completely be attributed to Call of Duty. This means that the largest shooter franchise has lost about 30% of its active players in the past year.
What reasons does Activision give? The publisher remains rather vague in identifying the causes and cites the following reasons for the decline:
- Low premium sales for CoD: Vanguard
- Decreased interest in CoD: Warzone
- CoD: Mobile with only slight changes
A statement also cites the COVID-19 pandemic as a reason, which on one hand reduces customers’ purchasing power and at the same time hinders content development.
Why did player numbers decline? CoD: Mobile is very popular but apparently struggles with signs of saturation. That Activision could not reach new players here seems to be the biggest surprise.
For the sales of CoD: Vanguard, this trend was already evident, similar to the free battle royale Warzone.
Vanguard struggled with reservations about the setting since the emergence of the first leaks. World War II did not convince many players, there was no real hype, and the overall innovations to the shooter were too meager.
Sales fell by 40% in the UK compared to its predecessor Cold War (via gamesindustry.biz) – and Cold War had already sold worse than the CoD hit Modern Warfare from 2019.
For Warzone and its players, it was also a disappointing year. Little content, hardly any changes, and even the new, large map Caldera did not bring the desired turnaround. Players even want the old map Verdansk back.
Additionally, there were major issues with cheaters and bugs in the games. Season 2 was even postponed to give developers two more weeks to fix the biggest problems:
How does Call of Duty plan to stop the trend? Although the financial report mentions that the current games Vanguard and Warzone received substantial updates in the first quarter, Activision is looking forward:
- The development of the new premium CoD is progressing well
- The successor to CoD MW 2019 is planned – the most successful title in the series so far
- Warzone: Mobile is coming
- The battle royale is set to repeat the great success on mobile
- Warzone 2 will be revealed later this year
- The sequel to the battle royale will be built from the ground up, with many innovations
- More staff for Activision
- More and more people are being hired to create more content for all CoD titles
Call of Duty has greatly benefited from rising player numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic but was unable to maintain the momentum and lost around 50 million players within a year.
We are also interested in your perspective from a player’s point of view: Has the content of Call of Duty been less appealing to you in the past year? What do you want from the world’s largest shooter franchise in the future?
Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts on the topic.
If you’d rather get updated on the current content of CoD, then check here: CoD Warzone: All info on Monster Season 3 / 2022 – Release, trailer & content
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