Summary
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 faces a player base crisis with a significant drop in players over months.
- Season 2 launch did little to bring back players with minor changes and underwhelming new content.
- Despite efforts like bringing back fan-favorite modes, player counts continue to drop, posing a challenge for developers.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has been facing a bit of a crisis. Within the first couple of months, the game lost 50 percent of its players, and a week later, it dropped to late Modern Warfare 3 numbers. Numerous issues have caused the game’s fanbase to drop it at lightning speeds.
Related
Black Ops 6 Players Are Desperate For More Care Package Reworks
Treyarch has acknowledged an issue in which “Care Packages can be claimed by teammates faster than intended.”
With Season 2 launching yesterday, you have to imagine that there was some hope within Activision that new content would bring players flooding back. That, though, doesn’t seem to have been the case.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 Season 2 Has Barely Moved The Dial For The Game’s Player Count
According to SteamDB, a peak of 84,311 players jumped into Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on Steam yesterday, on the day the game’s second season launched. Just two days prior, on Sunday, January 29, a peak of more than 85,000 players were playing the game. Of course, we’re comparing a weekend with a weekday here, but typically, happy players would come flooding back for a new season, whatever the day of the week.
SteamDB reports that, over the last 30 days, Black Ops 6 has had an average of 62,669 players playing the game on the Valve-owned platform. Yesterday, that average was 57,405, just under a ten percent drop. This is likely to increase over the coming days and as we reach the weekend, but it’s still far lower than it has been at any time since October 2023.
Despite fan-favorite mode Gun Game making its return in Season 2, signs were already ominous for its launch. Upon reveal, dozens of players expressed their disinterest in two of its new maps, Lifeline and Bullet, calling them “claustrophobic” and saying that they catered to the game’s “brainrot crowd.”
With Activision and Treyarch bringing back the series’ most popular modes and weapons and banning tens of thousands of cheaters, it’s hard to see where they go from here to reignite the game’s player base.
- Released
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October 25, 2024
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Suggestive Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
- OpenCritic Rating
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Strong