Modern Warfare 2 is Call of Duty’s biggest-ever Steam launch

Modern Warfare 2 is very hot right now. All that excitement extends to the PC platform, where yearly Call of Duty releases tended to perform poorly or, in some cases, not register at all.

That trend has been changing for a while now, of course, but Modern Warfare 2 appears to have taken things to new heights on PC this year.

On Steam, Modern Warfare 2 has been – and continues to be – among the platform’s weekly top sellers. There was little chance it wasn’t going to be a hit at launch, but we now have the hard numbers to prove it. The game attracted a staggering 238,522 concurrent players at its peak several hours ago.

SteamDB’s charts show steady climbs of player activity overnight. Seeing as many buyers were in bed or at work when the game went live in their region, that figure will likely grow later today, and through the weekend.

This is Call of Duty’s highest-ever peak concurrent on Steam, overtaking previous record-holder Black Ops 3, with 63,681.

At the time of this writing, Modern Warfare 2 occupies the number five slot on Steam’s most played games. Even more interesting here is that the new peak concurrent is significantly higher than last month’s beta, which was open to everyone (at least in its last two days).

The Steam figures, of course, do not represent the entirety of the population on PC, as you can still buy the game on Battle.net. PC codes bought on third-party stores are also limited to Activision Blizzard’s own platform, so it’s possible that’s where the majority exists.

With cross-play (even though some would like to disable it), cross-progression and well-optimised PC versions, Call of Duty’s comeback was inevitable. The fact Activision decided Modern Warfare 2 was the right game to bring Call of Duty back to Steam only made things better.

If you’re among the millions of people currently playing Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer, we have some solid advice about the fastest way to level up your weapons, and the best modes for big XP gains.

If you’re instead stuck at work, enjoy our campaign review and all our other coverage of Modern Warfare 2 under the game tag.