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Activision Blizzard has revealed that the number of Call of Duty players is falling despite increasing its developer pool by 25%
As per IGN, the numbers were revealed in the company’s latest earnings results. The number of the company’s active users was standing at 372 million at the end of March 2022. However, that’s now dropped to 361 million as of the end of June. That’s a loss of 11 million users across its games like Overwatch and the Call of Duty series.
As IGN themselves note, it’s been something of a downward trend for active users for the publisher since last year. Back on June 30 last year, the company reported its monthly active users as 408 million. However, this trend hasn’t stopped the publisher from increasing its developer headcount. “We continue to increase investment in our creative resources to meet the demand for our content,” it said. “Our development headcount at the end of the second quarter grew by 25% year-over-year.”
It’s been a bit of a rocky ride for the company’s most recent Call of Duty title – Call of Duty Vanguard. Though it received a relatively warm reception in November last year, it’s sales haven’t been on the level of other titles in the series. Back in May, Activision Blizzard put the blame for the game’s underperformance on its World War II setting. “The game’s World War II setting didn’t resonate with some of our community,” it said. “And we didn’t deliver as much innovation in the premium game as we would have liked.”
The company will be hoping to change its fortunes and get more players into this year’s Call of Duty entry. That’ll be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which is currently set to arrive on October 28, 2022.