Call of Duty may have debuted on the PC a decade ago, but in the years since, the series has enjoyed what can only be termed as an acrimonious relationship with PC gaming and PC gamers. And even though the games continue to do well on the PC, selling in the millions, it’s clear that their popularity on the platform seems to be in a sharp decline.
To wit: Call of Duty: Ghosts’s multiplayer on PC seems to officially be a bust. PC Gamers N noticed that the official Steam tracker had 4,574 people playing Call of Duty: Ghossts worldwide today (shockingly low numbers for any respectable multiplayer shooter, let alone Call of Duty); in contrast, 2012’s Black Ops II by Treyarch had 9,040 people playing.
Even if these are not peak hours for multiplayer gaming- and they might well not be, considering how generally low both numbers seem to be- they are indicative of a problem, and that problem is that Call of duty does not seem to be the preferred multiplayer game among PC gamers, and the new game definitely seems to be less popular than its predecessor.
Will this year’s upcoming Advance Warfare. which is being developed by Sledgehammer Games, is in the same vein as Treyarch’s Black Ops II, and which promises an overhaul of franchise standards and mechanics, be the game to breathe life back into the series after Ghosts’s subpar performance throughout. We’ll find out soon.