Sam (He/Him) is the former Managing Editor of DualShockers and is now Senior Reporter at TheGamer. He’s been in and around games media for six years now and has held a variety of roles within the industry, including staff writer, SEO editor, managing editor and global head of gaming content.
During this time, he’s hosted a PAX panel, interviewed game directors, reviewed some of the biggest games, attended Gamescom, Summer Game Fest, and Tokyo Game Show and covered some of the hottest news stories.
Sam has been learning Japanese for almost three years now, with the intention of bringing you news from the country before anyone else.
He’s been playing video games for as long as he can remember, and you can regularly find him on his PS5 or Nintendo Switch. When he’s not playing games, he’ll no doubt be watching his beloved Ipswich Town.
We could be witnessing the fall of a giant in real time. In a bygone era, the launch of a new Call of Duty game was a massive event: people would take time off work, kids would feign sickness to get out of school, and mile-long queues would form outside of stores ahead of the midnight release. By comparison, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 has kicked off with a sputter.
Releasing at midnight EST on November 14 (5 am GMT/9 pm PST), Call of Duty’s player count on Steam barely saw an increase, with more players playing the previous games in October than those who stayed awake for the launch of this one.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 Is Off To A Sputtering Start
According to data from SteamDB, 62,938 players were on the Call of Duty Steam launcher when Black Ops 7 launched this morning. There were around 40,000 players playing it just a few hours earlier. That means only 23,000 extra players joined in for the midnight launch of the latest Call of Duty game. There were roughly the same number of players playing the game on October 26, suggesting the hype levels for Black Ops 7 are at an all-time low.
By contrast, on its launch day last year, Black Ops 6 reached more than 249,000 concurrent players, climbing to over 306,000 that weekend. It could still get there, but it’ll need a big push.
Of course, there will be claims that “it’s midnight, people will be in bed,” but Battlefield 6 retained triple the player count of Call of Duty at that time, with 191,764 players still online when Black Ops 7 launched. Notably, Arc Raiders still had 337,000 players at that time, so it seems like Call of Duty doesn’t have the power to pull people away from their existing games (or their bedtimes) like it used to.
Battlefield 6 retained triple the Steam player count of Call of Duty with 191,764 players still online when Black Ops 7 launched.
There are obviously a few caveats to this, and it’s a little premature to be nay-saying: The game, like last year’s Black Ops 6, will have launched on Xbox Game Pass, and undoubtedly a large portion of players will get their Call of Duty fix on Microsoft’s platform, plus it is still very early in the game’s life-cycle, so there’s plenty of time for it to grow. There is also far stronger competition this year, with the two games mentioned above and the powerhouse that is Delta Force. However, as far as Call of Duty launches go, this one is utterly underwhelming. With numbers continually dropping for previous entries in the franchise, Activision and Microsoft have to be concerned.
Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs
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Roflmfao, called that shit, nobody but brain rotted kids want wall running hyper speed gun fighting. The game has lost its direction with all the fantasy shooter crap. They need to stop trying to attract kids to a game rated M for mature and keep their old school players the ones who remember the original all of duty happy. The rest will come when they MATURE.
2025-11-14 08:27:54
I guess it depends how many people have jumped into Battlefield and Arc Raiders that are sticky rather than trying them out then going back to old habits. Plus the PC release is staggered by region meaning that not all players could jump in at the same time anyway.
2025-11-15 07:53:10
