The latest installment in Activision’s flagship Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops 6, released on October 25 for consoles and PC, but just how successful has the subseries’ sixth entry been?
In 2024, FPS lovers are spoiled for choice, with Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, Valorant, and even older versions of CoD all vying for attention in the crowded genre.
Usually, a new entry for the latter ends up cannibalizing player numbers from older iterations, but early signs point to Black Ops 6 going above and beyond in not only retaining CoD’s core audience but growing it substantially.
After two years of declining player numbers on Steam, numbers are up and then some, but it’s worth crunching the available numbers to better discern how well Black Ops 6 is performing.
How many people play Black Ops 6?
Specific player numbers for Black Ops 6 aren’t available yet. However, there are some statistics we can look at to get an idea of the bigger picture.
Per SteamDB, Call of Duty’s 24-hour peak between October 26-27 was 306,460. This figure shouldn’t be taken as indicative of Black Ops 6’s player count, as it covers multiple different games and game modes, from online multiplayer and Warzone, to individual campaigns.
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However, taking a look at the six-month average helps to paint a clearer picture. Based on SteamDB’s graph tracking 24-hour peaks between May and October 2024, the total remained largely static at around 100k concurrent players. This figure only spiked twice during that period, once in May and then again in August, both of which were free-to-play weekends.
It’s safe to assume, based on the above, that Black Ops 6 has been responsible for a huge uptick in Call of Duty players. But, it’s impossible to know just how many are playing the sequel. Keep in mind that all of this data only takes PC – specifically Steam – into account, and doesn’t include console.
Considering that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is available to Game Pass members on PC, it’s likely that a large portion of players on the platform aren’t playing on Steam.
As the series has traditionally been incredibly popular on Xbox and PlayStation, expect the peak across all three platforms to be as much as 2 million, with Steam likely to account for only a fraction of that total.
To see how Call of Duty stacks up against its competitors, check out the player counts for Valorant, Apex Legends, and Counter-Strike 2.