Embark Studios’ brand-new extraction shooter Arc Raiders hit a new peak player count on Steam over the weekend, seeing 481,966 raiders online at the same time. As Arc Raiders was breaking its own concurrent player record, Black Ops 7‘s launch weekend saw lower than usual player counts for a Call of Duty Steam launch, suggesting the competition may be impacting CoD’s success on Steam.
Black Ops 7, the latest mainline Call of Duty game, hit a launch weekend peak of 100,332 players on Steam, less than a quarter of Arc Raiders’ weekend high. Of course the two numbers aren’t directly comparable–Arc Raiders is only available on Steam and the Epic Games Store for PC, while Black Ops 7 can also be purchased through Battle.net or the Microsoft Store, and is playable on PC Game Pass from launch–however the Black Ops 7 launch numbers are also lower than CoD’s previous Steam launches.
While last year’s Black Ops 6 also was available on Game Pass from launch, it still saw a Steam launch peak of over 300,000 players, almost three times the numbers clocked by its direct sequel. Modern Warfare 3’s November 2023 release was also higher, with a launch window peak of 190,000 players.
The Call of Duty franchise has a rocky history with Steam, with Activision choosing to distribute the game only through its own Battle.net storefront for a number of years, before finally bringing CoD back to Steam in 2022. Since Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, the game’s PC audience is further split on PC, with Game Pass presumably making up a decent number of PC players.
Black Ops 7’s lower numbers compared to previous CoD releases on Steam suggest the game is facing some stiff competition from this year’s other major releases in the genre. Arc Raiders just released its first major update, with players coming together over the weekend for a community event to unlock a new map in record time. Battlefield 6 also continues to go strong, sitting just below Arc Raiders in the Steam Charts with a weekend peak of almost 300,000 players.
