Call of Duty: WWII’s Beta Had Over 5 Times the Number of Concurrent Players Infinite Warfare Had Last Year on Steam

Last year’s Infinite Warfare was a clear indicator that the popular Call of Duty franchise was finally losing its grip on the first-person shooter market after losing 76% of its player base on Steam since the launch of Black Ops III in 2015,

With newcomers like PUBG bringing in over 1 million concurrent players and COD’s numbers the lowest in years, the series has been dire need of a change for some time. This year, Activision’s choice to return Call of Duty back to its boots on the ground roots seems to have sparked some interest among PC gamers again.

Over the weekend, Call of Duty: WWII’s free open beta debuted on Steam with a peak of 84k players – a 460% increase in players when compared to Infinite Warfare’s launch weekend peak of 15k players. WWII’s beta also topped the much more well-received, Black Ops III, and its peak of 63k players back in 2015.

Call of Duty: WWII Beta Players per Hour on Steam via GitHyp

With the beta coming to a close and WWII set for launch in one month, we’re now left to speculate where the player base will go from here. While free betas do tend to bring in more players then retail launches, debuting at #4 on Steam’s list of most played games is certainly a sign that players haven’t lost interest in the Call of Duty series yet.

But although the player count numbers are looking much better for Activision, it’s worth noting that despite being one of the most popular games on Steam over the weekend, WWII’s beta received Mostly Negative reviews from users. Player counts also dropped from Friday’s average of 54k players per hour down to 48k on Saturday and 34k on Sunday.

Still, even with negative reviews and a good amount of players not planning on returning after the beta, Call of Duty is in a much better position now than it was last November and is set for a solid launch next month that should be on par with Black Ops III.