Despite Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3‘s rocky launch, with critics panning its disappointing campaign and the title sitting at a Mostly Negative rating on Steam, Activision reported a positive shift in sentiment on Friday, stating that “player engagement is up” for their flagship title.
In a recent report, Activision provided a public statement saying that it is “having a blast supporting the community across Call of Duty.” “The teams have had fun connecting with our players and creating high-quality, new experiences for them.” The publisher stated that “player engagement is up with more players playing now than this time last year.”
While Activision claims that player engagement is at a high mark, it did not provide the Forbes contributor with any concrete numbers. It’s also worth noting that it is quite difficult to find individual public player counts for MW3 and Warzone. The closest information we have for their player count is from Steam Charts, which suggests Modern Warfare 3, Modern Warfare 2, and Warzone combined for 78,421 daily active players on the platform on average within the last 30 days.
On forums, several players point out that the games have received better support throughout the past year and more “reasons to come back with every season.” Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone have consistently received updates, new additions, and quality-of-life changes, including all new maps, which were praised by the community.
“I’ll follow this comment up by saying that MWIII ain’t perfect but it’s certainly better than last year and the year before. Way more content and reasons to come back with every season. The maps they’ve added feel great to play on for the most part. Gotta give credit where credit is due,” said a user on the Modern Warfare 3 subreddit.
MW3‘s latest season also added several new improvements, including skippable seasonal cinematic cutscenes, filtering options for operators, along with all-new maps and new modes such as Capture the Flag and One in the Chamber. Warzone has also received new modes. including a new Bootcamp, alongside other quality-of-life changes. Activision has also added new movement changes, an overhauled perk system, more loadout options, and more.
While we haven’t been provided concrete numbers proving an increased player count, it seems that both the developers and the community have high hopes for the games and are happy with their progress thus far despite the rocky start.
