While there are some who are hoping that the next Call of Duty title could reinvigorate the franchise, there’s growing evidence that it’s losing players at a rather alarming rate for the moment. In fact, it appears that the things that Call of Duty players have been complaining about over the last year is causing quite a few of them to move away from the games in the series entirely.

There was a time not all that long ago that Call of Duty: Warzone was one of the most popular games on the market. It was in fact so popular that it helped the Call of Duty franchise surpass a couple of impressive milestones. There was a time when the series was amassing as many as 150 million players per month. However, while the player count was once shooting up towards the stratosphere, it’s been pointing downwards at a breakneck pace.

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According to Activision's first 2022 investor report users across Call of Duty games decreased rather precipitously throughout 2021 and into 2022. The franchise has now dropped by more than 50 million monthly users in just a single year. While the games still have a player count that would make quite a few developers jealous, it’s the speed at which the player count has dropped that should be concerning to Activision.

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The drop in players is the steepest that’s been seen since Call of Duty: Warzone was first released back in 2020. Activision Blizzard is blaming that drop on two factors. The first is that there is simply a waning interest in Call of Duty: Vanguard, according to the company. The firm also admitted that people have been jumping off the Warzone bandwagon at a faster rate than in past years.

Because Warzone is free-to-play, its share of the blame for the struggles of the Call of Duty franchise is likely outsized when comparing it to Vanguard’s effect on the player count struggles. Fans have been voicing their displeasure about Warzone for quite a while now and have also been clamoring for a true sequel to be made in order to jump-start the interest level.

It turns out that there will be a Warzone 2 coming in the not-too-distant future and it appears that Activision is banking on the release of that game to turn around the slumping sales and player counts. If that’s not enough, Infinity Ward is also working on a sequel to the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot. Whether that will indeed spark a rebound in the Call of Duty franchise, and do it soon enough, is an open question.

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Source: Activision Blizzard