Update March 21: A day after the original post and new peak player count, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) continued to climb. It set a new peak player count of 53,410 players on Steam, at one point, having more active players than Bungie's brand-new title, Marathon. Crazy stuff. Original post follows.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare first launched in October 2019, which was more than six years ago. It's held in high regard by a lot of the player base, and, of course, it's a game many played a lot of through the global pandemic of 2020.
What wasn't on my 2026 bingo card was seeing a huge surge in players, at least on Steam. The game didn't go onto Steam for a few years after launch, so it never really caught on, but in the last 24 hours, it has surged to an all-time high player count.
The reason? It's currently just $6 as part of the Steam Spring Sale. That's less than half of what it's going for in the current Battle.net sale. I mean, for $6, it's pretty much a no-brainer, and with Modern Warfare 4 heavily rumored to be Call of Duty 2026, why not go back to where it all began?
Modern Warfare wasn't just a reboot of one of Call of Duty's flagship franchises; it was a significant shift in just about every aspect of the game. If you put it next to 2018's Black Ops 4, you could easily be fooled into thinking there was more than just a year between them.
It was based on a completely new engine, which not only changed the look and feel of the game, but the movement and gunplay were also seriously upgraded. I'll be the first to admit that I didn't like it initially. But that was mostly because I spent a year getting half-decent at Black Ops 4, and then it changed completely.
Modern Warfare is also where Warzone began. Blackout may have been the first Call of Duty battle royale experience, but not long after began the free-to-play mode we all know and sometimes appreciate today.
I've already snagged myself a copy. I originally had it on Battle.net, but I managed to lock myself out of that account entirely, so it's gone. I also never actually played the campaign (nor the campaigns from the following two Modern Warfare titles), so I guess it'll be good to get up to speed before it returns later this year.
Or, you know, if you're bored of Black Ops 7, it's a cheap way to play something different. For me, between this and Game Pass, I can at least play all the recent Modern Warfare campaigns now before the next one drops.
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