How many people play Call of Duty?

Popular shooter video games are plenty nowadays,  the one with a very long history here is Call of Duty. The game was published initially by Activision back in 2003. Over the course of 19+ years the publisher has released new thematics for the franchise’s games, maintaining the initial title but adding different storylines and gameplay. It is still considered to be one of the successful franchises both in gaming and esports. Technologies advanced, and Blizzard made reworks on the game’s aspects of mechanics, design and animations. Content updates are made regularly: almost every Autumn there is a new iteration of Call of Duty. But how many people play CoD indeed?

The very first game of this franchise was released on October 29th 2003.  The developer of it was the Infinite Ward studio. The game was available on Windows devices, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It featured World War II events, where the battlefield featured American British and Soviet forces clashing.

Releases

Two years later from the successful debut of Call of Duty, November 11 2008 became the release date for COD 2. The game was supported on platforms like Xbox, PC and OSX. The storyline seemed to be just the better copy of the former Call of Duty game — the very first one. It became the bestseller of the year by Infinity Ward, as players loved the World War atmosphere presented in Fall 2005. 

COD 4: Modern Warfare was the next big release of the popular shooter, which had 10 million copies sold by Summer 2008. Next year, Modern Warfare set record breaking stats for this game: 310 million dollars revenue worldwide. A couple of other names appeared later, such as Call of Duty: Ghosts and Advanced Warfare, but these did not have the success of their predecessors. 

To sum it up, the franchise generated 15 billion dollars since its very first release and its popularity was maintained through the help of the huge work done marketing-wise. Call of Duty tournaments were being broadcasted on American TV channels, so this helped a lot in bringing in more interest.

How many people play Call of Duty?

Statistics show that the franchise sold over 400 million copies. We can conclude from this, that 400 million people, at least, enjoyed any of the releases at least once in their life. The growth from its early days up until 2021 has been amazing. Here is a well-rounded data from the past 5 years in global reach:

• 2018 — 70 million;
• 2020 — 250 million;
• 2021 — 400 million.

Coming next, let's see how the franchise prospered this year and how many people play cod in 2022.

What’s the maximum number of players per day?

Activision presented new details of the player count of its Call of Duty titles as per October 2021, so there is a basis to estimate how many people play Call of Duty. Modern Warfare, for example, had its peak in August 2021 of 914,806 users. The mobile version of the game — COD Mobile, has at least 5x more players, indicating that it is more accessible to larger masses. The most up to date stats of March 2022 show this progress for the mobile title:

Data presented by Active Player

There isn’t enough data presented for Call of Duty: Warzone, but in the past, the number of daily players came between 250,000 and 500,000. Another source, Player Counter claims that in the second week of March, the daily count reached 318,000 concurrently online.

Call of Duty Player Count by Country

It is not a secret that the United States is ahead of all of the countries when it comes to the active player base in the franchise of Call of Duty. The number, provided by Statista shows that 22,22% of the Warzone community comes from NA, while China holds 5,85 percent of users. UK and Brazil show similar interest of 4,61% of overall players by country. In Europe, the popularity decreases with Germany, where the game has only 3,40% of its community. 

The other settlement, Modern Warfare, shows similar results: the US is still on top of the table, but the game now is less popular in Brazil (3,30%), than in the UK (5,60%), Canada (4,06%) and Germany (4,85%). 

An earlier report shows that in 2019 there were at least 28,5 million players of COD Mobile in the US, while in India the number was 17,5 million.

The rest is scattered through different countries of the globe.

With the ongoing political and military situation in the Ukraine, Activision Blizzard has decided to stop supporting its games in the territory of the Russian Federation, as a part of global sanctions pointed at the Russian government. This means that we’ll see the decrease of player count in the long run from spring 2022.

Call of Duty Player Count by Device

Call of Duty is enjoyed mostly on PlayStation, while Xbox and PC present fewer percentages.

• Playstation — 42,1%;
• Xbox — 25,6%;
• PC — 28,4%;
• Mobile — 3,9%.

The exact player count on different devices have not been presented yet, so all we can do is do approximate calculations that are not truthful enough.

How many people play Warzone?

Call of Duty games are accessible not only on PC and mobile devices, but also consoles like XBox and PlayStation. This means that the huge 100,000,000 community also loves to enjoy the game with traditional controllers. In fact, 30% of the player base are PC users, while the rest is divided between consoles and mobile devices. We can conclude how many people play Call of Duty on PlayStation, as presented within a survey by Dexerto. 41 million Warzone players log into the game through either Playstation 4 or 5. The numbers are rounded, as the same gamer can have both versions of the console and Warzone might be installed on both of them. Another survey from Statista shows that currently the players of COD: Warzone on Playstation 5 are nearing 17.9 million in count, as per 2021.

Call of Duty Xbox Users

The calculations are not easy when separating different models of the same console of XBox, as most people buy a subscription package instead of physical copies of CoD, but reports say the actual player base in 2022 is 29 million in Warzone on  Xbox devices. When it comes to the title’s Twitch viewership, the numbers are quite impressive: 1.613.626 is the peak number the game has collected concurrently online. But there has been a sudden decrease when December 2021 came. The daily average was as poor as 61.821 viewers.

How Many People Play Modern Warfare? 

The number of Modern Warfare gamers has increased since July 2019, but nowadays, the daily peak is not as impressive as the monthly peak in the timespan of over 2.5 years. Below you can see more details in chart, as provided by Steam Stats platform:

How many people play Cold War?

Gamestat provided data on player engagement in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and it simply shows that there have been 3,8 million accounts that earned a trophy within the game, which means the players spent some time before leaving it for another title. The statistics refers to PlayStation 4 users only, however. At the same time, the game was available on 4 different platforms, but not enough surveys were completed to understand how many people play cod Black Ops Cold War.

In the year of late 2020 Activision made an announcement on the stats, reporting that it had 5,7 million digital units sold, but from then on, there haven’t been any activity counting platforms for this game.

Is CoD: Warzone dying?

Recent statistics on call of duty player count indicate that the viewership of the game is experiencing a reasonable decrease. That is because apart from a few maps like Verdansk, Caldera, there are no additions that could bring more interesting content to the game. Besides, the rising number of hackers and cheaters became the point of concern. Even though Ricochet continuously bans the accounts under suspicion, there is still more interest in rival battle royales and shooters. In March 2022, Ricochet reported a new wave of bans and account removals from Warzone. If they do an average of 60,000 account bans a month, this will, in the long run, affect the actual player count. To sum it up, the worries will vanish if Activision takes care of the support for COD: Warzone, by keeping it competitive enough through regular updates.