Activision has announced that its monthly active player base has dropped by 50 million in just one year. Citing issues with Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone as contributing factors to this huge drop.
On March 31, 2021, Activision reported around 150 million monthly active users, which were primarily earned through their Call of Duty titles, including the free-to-play battle royale Warzone, which took over after its March release. 2020.
In every quarter since then, however, the number has dropped significantly, to the point that just a year later they only have 100 million active monthly users, down more than 30% year on year.
This contrasts with other publishers like Blizzard and King showing very minor drops in monthly active users.
Activision has seen a decline in monthly active users over the last year. The company relates Vanguard’s lower sales, which also lead to lower engagement on Warzone, along with more people going out with pandemic restrictions lifting over the last year as causes. pic.twitter.com/elVOKBRZiy
— CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) April 25, 2022
Activision cites Warzone and Vanguard as reasons for the drop
As Activision releases other titles, they attribute these dips in numbers to Vanguard, Call of Duty’s current main game, and declining interest in Warzone.
As explained in their Q1 2022 financial results, Activision representatives said: “Net bookings for Call of Duty on console and PC declined year over year in the first quarter, reflecting weaker premium sales for Call of Duty: Vanguard compared to the prior year title and higher engagement weak for Call of Duty: Warzone.”
The massive downsizing is likely to continue if Activision doesn’t take the right steps.
Though carefully worded, the message is clear: Activision has lost a large percentage of its player base due to declining Vanguard sales and dwindling engagement in Warzone.
This ultimately proves that the publisher can be worried and that the feelings of the players are not just an unfounded impression. Indeed, the lack of interest in Caldera, the failure of Vanguard’s Zombie mode, a very average multiplayer and multiple critical bugs appearing every week may be right for the CoD license.
With leaks and reports slowly starting to come out about Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2, both slated for release in 2022/23, it will be interesting to see if that number turns in the right direction for Activision.
It only remains to hope that Activision will understand the message and invest more resources in its flagship games and not just new cosmetics.