Black Ops 6 peak player count plummets following disappointing Season 1 update

The Call of Duty franchise often attracts millions of fans loading into multiplayer, Zombies, and Warzone. Black Ops 6 began on the front foot, seeing a huge uptick of players looking to master the best weapons as quickly as possible, but that peak is quickly dropping.

Season 1 for Treyarch’s 2024 game saw a wealth of brand-new content arrive across the Call of Duty universe. Black Ops 6’s Warzone integration took place while multiplayer received new maps, game modes, and a battle pass packed with content. Despite this, the player count is already starting to decline following a post-launch update that missed the mark.

Black Ops 6 player count is already shrinking

Since launch, the Black Ops 6 player count has already dropped 16%. That’s according to SteamDB which has tracked the number of PC players loading into the action using Valve’s hugely popular platform. When the game launched on October 25, Black Ops 6 recorded a peak of 249,713 which increased even further to 315,334 in early November.

With Season 1 in full swing, the tide is beginning to turn. A 24-hour peak player count of 263,738 marks the start of a downward trend as players start to grow tired of a meta that’s already becoming stale and a map pool that fails to inspire.

The all-time peak player count for Call of Duty coincided with the launch of 2022’s Modern Warfare 2, a game many newcomers to the franchise still cite as one of the very best. Even with a return to Black Ops and innovations such as Omnimovement, it appears the interest is already starting to dwindle.

Of course, these figures are solely for the Steam player count. Other platforms rarely release exact player counts for their biggest games but there’s a high chance the downtick is visible across Battle.net and consoles.

Why is the player count decreasing?

There are a multitude of reasons as to why the Black Ops 6 player count is starting to fall off like a lead balloon. Treyarch’s decision to block the use of legacy XP tokens resulted in widespread community backlash while the Season 1 update didn’t introduce any new content for the hugely popular Zombies mode, a mode which has undergone a resurgence following its return to the classic round-based format.

The arrival of Black Ops 6 Ranked Play on November 21 could spark a reversal of fortune in addition to the Season 1 Reloaded update which features a brand-new round-based Zombies map in the form of Citadelle Des Morts. Fending off the undead is back in a big way and could be the key to stop the game’s player count from falling even further.

If you’re still loading into the action, why not check out the best AEK-973 loadout that’s dominating the action? Alternatively, check out how to exfil a Zombies map before the undead get too hot to handle.