Embark Studios’ brand-new extraction shooter Arc Raiders hit a new peak player count on Steam over the weekend, seeing 481,966 raiders online at the same time. As Arc Raiders was breaking its own concurrent player record, Black Ops 7‘s launch weekend saw lower than usual player counts for a Call of Duty Steam launch, suggesting the competition may be impacting CoD’s success on Steam.
Black Ops 7, the latest mainline Call of Duty game, hit a launch weekend peak of 100,332 players on Steam, less than a quarter of Arc Raiders’ weekend high. Of course the two numbers aren’t directly comparable–Arc Raiders is only available on Steam and the Epic Games Store for PC, while Black Ops 7 can also be purchased through Battle.net or the Microsoft Store, and is playable on PC Game Pass from launch–however the Black Ops 7 launch numbers are also lower than CoD’s previous Steam launches.
While last year’s Black Ops 6 also was available on Game Pass from launch, it still saw a Steam launch peak of over 300,000 players, almost three times the numbers clocked by its direct sequel. Modern Warfare 3’s November 2023 release was also higher, with a launch window peak of 190,000 players.
