© Treyarch
The peak attendance over 24 hours for Black Ops 7 fell to 52,632 players according to SteamDB. An extremely low figure for a historically dominant license, even more striking when we realize that VRChat And Dead by Daylight are doing better at the start of 2026. A month after its release, in December, the number of players even dropped to 43,569while the holidays usually bring a massive surge of activity for multiplayer games. This year ? Nothing.
Marketing efforts… without results
Activision, however, tried to rekindle the flame: free weekends, -50% off the price of the gameand a Zombie mode hailed as “the best in ten years”. Nothing happened. The developers probably hoped that players would forget the failures of Black Ops 6but the shaky cooperative campaign and an AI that could still be improved have annihilated any attempt at redemption.
Unexpected competitors widen the gap
Black Ops 7 now occupies the 44th place in the Steam rankingssurpassed not only by direct competing titles like Battlefield 6but also by games with very different positioning: VRChat, Team Fortress 2, Arc Raidersor even Elden Ring: Nightreign. This situation is unprecedented: never a game Call of Duty had dropped this low so soon after its launch.
The next opus facing GTA 6: mission impossible?
All eyes are already on the next one Call of Dutywhose development is entrusted to Infinity Ward. But this studio will have to face a colossal obstacle: the release of GTA 6, scheduled for November 2026, and which promises to be a media and commercial tidal wave. As a player comment on Reddit sums it up: “The real problem isn’t that COD has become bad, it’s that it can no longer evolve. Everyone moves on. »