Is Call of Duty Dying?

Call of Duty has been regarded as the best first-person shooter franchise on the market for the past twenty years. It has gone from strength to strength, with the series spanning almost forty major releases. However, since the franchise arguably peaked between 2009 and 2013, player counts have fallen or are inconsistent, there are a lot of dissents in the community, and developers keep slipping up. So, we’re asking an all-important question: ‘Is Call of Duty dying?’

It’s a top-tier esports title – but the ecosystem is restricted. There’s a popular battle royale offering in the mix – but it has been plagued with cheaters and stability issues since it was released back in 2020. Every year, a new multiplayer title is released in the series – but it’s almost always met with disappointment by fans that just aren’t pleased with it. There are so many pitfalls to address, it makes the question, ‘Is Call of Duty dying,’ all that much harder to fully overcome.

Is there enough work being done to save the ecosystem? If COD is dying, is there anything that Activision can do to save it? Let’s find out.

As Time Goes On

It can be argued that Call of Duty’s heyday spanned from 2009 to around 2013, reaching from Modern Warfare 2 to Ghosts. This was, according to opinions and statistics, the most popular and exciting period for Call of Duty, and the franchise saw massive growth. While the esports side of Call of Duty has continued to grow as time has gone on, the multiplayer experience and overall feel of Call of Duty were much more enjoyable a decade ago.

From this period, some of the most popular Call of Duty titles of all time emerged:

Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010, 31m sold)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011, 31m sold)
Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012, 30m sold)
Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013, 29m sold)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009, 26m sold)

These old titles still hold up today. For instance, in March of 2022, a special MW3 esports tournament was held, and according to escharts.com, it pulled in a peak viewership of 439,000 users. This puts it in second place overall for the record of the most concurrent viewers for a Call of Duty tournament in esports industry history. So, is Call of Duty dying? If we compare what exists today to that ‘heyday’, it could be.

While 2019’s Modern Warfare was something of a boon for the franchise, revitalising both the multiplayer scene and the esports community, it died off fast. There’s no doubt that Warzone was a monumental introduction in 2020, but the poor performances of both Cold War and Vanguard sapped the franchise’s energy. That’s one of the things that made people declare that Call of Duty is dead.

Modern Warfare Makes it Manageable

But, with all that negative news aside, we should touch upon a ‘mixed topic’ – Modern Warfare 2. In October 2022, Activision released Modern Warfare 2, serving as a direct expansion to 2019’s Modern Warfare. It turned out to be the fastest-selling Call of Duty title in history, shifting more than 8 million copies in a week and notching up $1 billion in sales in just a few days.

It was a monumental title that took the world by storm, but it was still met with a lot of disappointment from fans, particularly because it was missing key deliverables at launch. For instance, Modern Warfare 2 was missing any hardcore playlists when the game was released, which was considered a bizarre move by a large portion of the community.

Regardless, Modern Warfare 2 made for a popular title, and it made some fans feel like the claim that Call of Duty is dying is a ridiculous one.

So, what happened to Call of Duty, and how did Activision let it get this way? Let’s explore that topic.

Activision’s Active Vision

For years, Activision (and Call of Duty’s various developers) have been wrestling with the community at large, trying desperately to keep the players happy. In the wider debate as to whether or not Call of Duty is dying, we can simply look to the numbers that echo the opinions of the players themselves. In Q1 of 2022, it was revealed that Activision had witnessed a grand slump through 2021, losing millions of active monthly users on titles like Call of Duty: Warzone.

Within just one year, Call of Duty’s platform had bled out, losing more than 60 million players.

It’s thought that the commercial failure that was Vanguard and the extremely underwhelming performance of Warzone led to this drop in players. When Caldera was introduced to Warzone, it brought with it a slew of issues, bugs, and exploits, and players simply weren’t happy. Many abandoned the battle royale platform and moved to other titles, like Apex Legends, and that included some of the best Call of Duty players the world has come to know.

Here are some of the opinions of fans, taken from recent Reddit posts:

Activision’s decisions to focus on battle pass content and aesthetic bundles are always met with a mixed reception. For many, they’re the plague of the community, but for others, the bright, inventive skins and bundles are a welcome introduction.

For many fans, Call of Duty Vanguard marked a point to step back from the franchise.

By now, Call of Duty has established such a strong reputation that it remains at the top of the charts regardless of how good the actual game is.

Is Call of Duty dying? Not according to CongenitalSlurpees, but it’s only thanks to its sales figures that it isn’t.

Is It Time To Call It Quits?

According to a study by GamesIndustry, Call of Duty may simply be suffering from the universal exhaustion of the franchise.

On streaming platforms like Twitch, Call of Duty has seen a massive decline in viewership. While the esports tournaments bring in the big numbers, viewer counts on titles like Warzone, Vanguard, and Cold War have essentially crashed in recent months. As fewer streamers are putting out content and fewer viewers are watching that content, Call of Duty in general has less exposure, while competing titles grow consistently over time.

Even Modern Warfare 2, the most recent title, experience a huge drop in viewership over a short period of time. It peaked at 751,937 viewers the day the game was released, but by the time of writing this article in June 2023, the average viewer count over the last seven days sat at just 25,000 users.

According to TwitchTracker.com, Warzone’s performance on Twitch has been declining since April of 2021, with claims that Caldera killed Warzone:

For almost two decades, the Call of Duty formula has remained relatively static. There’s a single-player story to explore, a multiplayer mode, potentially a Zombies feature, and now, battle royale. When Warzone 2.0 was released back in November 2022, it brought with it an ‘extraction shooter’ mode that has turned out to be relatively popular, adding yet another arrow to the Call of Duty quiver.

If we’re asking, ‘is Call of Duty dying’, we can certainly see evidence that it might be. However, the success of Modern Warfare 2 can’t be discounted, and there are high expectations that the franchise can and will continue to deliver for years to come.

In May 2023, the next Call of Duty title was reportedly revealed by insiders – Modern Warfare 3. It’s a follow-on title from 2022’s Modern Warfare 2, and there are expectations that it’ll address all the concerns that fans had with Modern Warfare 2, making the game much more enjoyable in a general sense. There are also hopes that Modern Warfare 3 will boost up the esports scene, bringing in a fresh host of Call of Duty betting opportunities.

Is Call of Duty dying? There are signs that it might have been, and it’s certainly in a lull right now, but it may come back up if Modern Warfare 3 is a hit.