Three Months After Its Steam Launch, Black Ops 6’s Player Count Shows No Signs of Recovery

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 has had a rough few months since its launch, which was initially met with surprisingly positive reviews from fans and critics alike. Both the Zombies mode and single-player campaign were heavily praised, although there remained some criticism of its multiplayer modes.

Given how important multiplayer is to the well-being and longevity of a live service title, the slow but steady decline of its online services (thanks to the influx of cheaters, game-balancing issues, and overall stagnation) has finally come back to haunt Black Ops 6.

The title has shown a sharp fall in its active player base, plummeting below the 40,000 active player base mark as per SteamDB. This is despite numerous patches and updates, and things look to be quite bleak for Call of Duty.

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 can’t seem to recover its initial player base

As detailed within the SteamDB page for Call of Duty, the game has an active player base of 37,578 players as of the time of writing this article – a far cry from its all-time peak of 491,670 players, which precedes the release of Black Ops 6.

This is quite worrying, especially when taking into account that the much-hyped Season 2 update already launched on January 28, 2025. Season 2 has failed to bring veterans and newcomers to the series alike, and serves as a reminder of the many issues plaguing Call of Duty at present.

In sharp contrast, the concurrent number of active players was approximately 306,460 (as per SteamDB) on October 2024 – right around the launch of Black Ops 6. This is a rather unprecedented 87.74% drop in its player base, which does bring into question the longevity and viability of the Call of Duty brand given current circumstances.

Overall, the situation is quite unfortunate, and Activision must get a grip on things before it is too late.

While these numbers do not account for Game Pass users, Activision needs to step up before it is too late

It should be kept in mind that these numbers while indicative of the overall health of the game, do not paint the entire picture. After all, SteamDB does not take into account players from other platforms – such as Xbox’s Game Pass subscription service.

Game Pass has included Black Ops 6 as part of its game library since launch, and the overall lower cost of entry (even if it does not include a permanent, digital license to the game) does make it quite a lot more tempting for players to use over Steam.

As such, the player count is definitely a lot higher than what the SteamDB numbers might suggest, thanks to Game Pass and console (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S) users. It’s still not enough though, and is a fraction of what the initial playerbase used to be.

The current state of Black Ops 6 is rather bleak, with the game being riddled with cheaters, which makes the game a lot worse to play for everyone – despite reassurances from Activision regarding the same. Ricochet seemingly blocks out ‘non-supported’ platforms in order to attempt to thwart cheaters, but in reality, has proven to be quite inefficient.

The game is also a buggy mess, with plenty of new error reports and crashes being reported daily, most of which should not exist in the first place – especially from a publisher with access to so much R&D. The player base is rightfully frustrated, and Activision’s nonchalant outlook on the same is quite disheartening.

Activision needs to step up and address these issues immediately, or risk losing its player base for good. This is the worst Call of Duty has been in a while.