Call of Duty is easily one of the most beloved shooter franchises in the history of gaming. It has been around for more than twenty years and secured hundreds of millions of players. Every year, it tops sales charts with each new game, and despite a rocky road in some places, it remains one of the best-selling franchises ever made. As we go through 2025, we’re wondering one thing: what does the Call of Duty player count look like? How many people play COD these days?
It might look strong on the surface, but what happens when we probe a little deeper? For more than a decade, the series has cultivated has played host to one of the most popular esports scenes in the industry, centered on the Call of Duty League. It has allowed countless creators to make a career out of streaming the series. But how big is the Call of Duty player count once we start to look a little closer? Let’s find out – in this breakdown, we’ll sum up how many people are playing COD in 2025.
Is Call of Duty Still Popular?
Call of Duty remains dramatically popular, even in the face of adversity. There are lots of competing titles in the space these days, and it’s hard for Call of Duty to stay relevant, but it still manages to. Despite some controversies and dissent within the community, Call of Duty remains a top-tier series with millions of players, even today. It has long since transcended being a simple war-based shooter, though.
Now, Call of Duty boasts a battle royale platform, a massively successful mobile game, and countless ‘side offerings’ like COD Zombies and Spec Ops. It’s a diverse, dynamic, and ever-developing ecosystem that is backed by several studios. It can be argued that there’s more manpower behind Call of Duty than any other game series ever made.
It’s still one of the most widely popular games because it’s just so accessible. It’s an easy game to play and anyone can understand the core concepts of Call of Duty. That’s why the Call of Duty player count remains quite high year in and year out.
Although, popularity definitely wanes from time to time. Not every game catches fire. Some have lacklustre players a month after release and others hold attention for much longer. How many play the game from year to the next can be quite different.
How Many People Play COD in 2025?
Let’s look at the core of this topic: the Call of Duty player count.
How many people are playing Call of Duty these days? It’s hard to get an exact figure, but estimations suggest that COD’s daily player count, across the entire spectrum, numbers in the tens of millions. That’s split between COD Mobile, Warzone, and whatever the most recent multiplayer game is. COD Mobile and Warzone have a bit of advantage there, but that’s because they’re free-to-play, immensely popular games.
Unfortunately, Activision Blizzard changed how Call of Duty is presented as a series, which has put blockers in the way of getting player counts. Originally, we’d have pulled the player count from Steam – which was always available – and used that to work out a rough, global player count. Now, Call of Duty is presented as one ‘hub’ on platforms, with Black Ops, MWII, MWIII, and Warzone being grouped.
(Source: SteamCharts)
At the time of writing, ‘Call of Duty’ boasts around 40,000 total players on Steam alone. That doesn’t take into consideration any other platform that these games are on, so it’s far too rough a number to make an accurate estimation.
Call of Duty Player Count on the Decline
The current snapshot doesn’t tell the full story. Looking at data on Steam, there’s a clear trend. Call of Duty players are on the decline. For Black Ops 6, Warzone, and classic games. Its all-time peak in Steam numbers was about half a million. Now in early 2025 though, the game hasn’t gotten above a fifth of that in quite a while.
The CoD player count has been declining since October 2024, with a steep drop off after a month or so.
The player count declining after a new release is to be expected, but the current CoD game hasn’t held on to the player base at all. It has been a disappointing release. At the moment, changes are being made to the CoD release schedule. Trying to modernize the old one a year schedule that Activision pursued at the expense of quality. We’ll have to see if this is enough to reverse the longer-term trend in the CoD player count. We know there’s CoD content in the same way still planned through 2027 at least.
Do People Still Watch COD Streams?
Call of Duty remains a popular enough series when it comes to streamers. There are plenty of content creators who have made their fortune streaming COD games, here are plenty of content creators who have made their fortune streaming COD games, especially the top Warzone streamers.
However, a clear decline in viewership has been noticed across the board in recent months. For instance, Black Ops 6 was released in October 2024, and it pulled in a peak concurrent viewer count of 481,586. However, its current average viewership is around 8,000 people. Not exactly setting the world on fire, but its release did go well.
Similarly, Call of Duty: Warzone boasts an all-time high peak viewer count of 1,613,626 users. But its current average viewership is 26,621. It has been declining year on year for quite a while now. 2023 saw a bit of a bounce back for Warzone, but it is heading lower and lower now.
Hilariously, the original Call of Duty game saw a huge jump in viewership on Twitch at one point as streamers mistakenly said that they were broadcasting ‘Call of Duty’. In error, they were selecting the original game that launched more than twenty years ago.
People are still watching COD streams and the Call of Duty player count is still quite high, but there’s definitely a decline taking place. One that’s gotten harsher as the years have gone on. Call of Duty still attracts big numbers at launch, but it’ll take a more consistently fun game to actually keep those players around for more than a month.
For everyone asking, ‘Is Call of Duty dying?’: not yet – but all the signs are pointing to it.
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