It's been a tough few months for Call of Duty, mainly facilitated by issues with this year's entry, Black Ops 6. The game faced backlash for using AI, has been constantly under fire for its expensive cosmetics, and its maps have been called some of the worst in franchise history. There's been a near-constant barrage of negativity surrounding the title.
Ultimately, this led to Black Ops 6's player count falling below Modern Warfare 3's just a couple of months after launch, and it failed to recover, even with the launch of season 2.
"SBMM takes away the sense of skill and mastery."
While it looked like things couldn't get any worse for the storied franchise, they have, with the game now hitting record-low player numbers on Steam since its launcher was released on the Valve-owned platform.
When it launched, excitement was high around Black Ops 6. An Xbox Game Pass release meant it was accessible for new and lapsed players, and on Steam, it peaked at 313,313 users. That changed quickly, though.
Prior to today, the Call of Duty launcher's lowest average player count on Steam sat at 55,145.6, according to SteamDB. This was back...
