Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is off to a much stronger start on Steam than last year's game, and it has only released one mode so far. The Call of Duty app on Steam hit a 24-hour peak of 108,551 concurrent players on Saturday (October 17th), according to SteamDB, following the launch of Modern Warfare 4's Campaign Early Access the day before.
That number is already higher than the best peak Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 ever reached on Steam. Last year's game topped out at 100,332 concurrent players on November 16, 2025, during its launch weekend, which means Modern Warfare 4 beat it with a single-player campaign that only digital pre-order customers can play right now.
Campaign Early Access Is Live
Activision and Infinity Ward opened Campaign Early Access on Friday (October 16th) for everyone who digitally pre-ordered or pre-purchased the game on Xbox Series X and S, Xbox on PC, PS5, Battle.net, Steam, and Nintendo Switch 2. The official Call of Duty account celebrated the moment on X:
The full campaign is available in early access, all sixteen missions of it. Players step into the role of Private Park Hyun Jun, a young South Korean soldier fighting back against a full-scale invasion of the Korean Peninsula, while John Price, now an operator-turned-outlaw, hunts the person pulling the strings. The story also travels to Paris, New York, and Mumbai. Finishing missions unlocks rewards for multiplayer and DMZ, including base Operators such as Park, Cho, Dallas, and Dunn, plus Double XP and Double Weapon XP tokens.
The official account has been leaning into the reaction since launch. On Saturday it asked players "How many times did you die in Mission 2? No lying, we can check", which suggests at least one early mission is giving people trouble.
Reading The Steam Numbers
There is one big caveat with these figures. Modern Warfare 4, Black Ops 7, and Call of Duty: Warzone all run through the same Call of Duty app on Steam, so SteamDB's counter tracks everyone playing any of them at once. That said, SteamDB's chart shows the app spent most of the past year well under 100,000 players, and the jump to over 108,000 lines up directly with the campaign's release.
Steam is also only one piece of the PC picture, since the game sells on Battle.net and the Xbox app as well, and console players make up a huge share of the audience. Even so, Steam numbers are one of the few public signals available, and they were one of the clearest signs that Black Ops 7 was struggling last November.
For a sense of scale, the app's all-time record is 491,670 concurrent players, set on November 20, 2022, shortly after Modern Warfare II brought the series back to Steam and Warzone 2.0 launched alongside it. Modern Warfare 4 has a long way to go to match that, but multiplayer is still days away.
Activision Wants To Rebuild Trust
Activision has been open about the fact that Black Ops 7 did not land the way it wanted. In an interview with The Game Business Show released on Thursday (October 15th), chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl said "I don't think we were happy with every aspect of last year's game, and we heard the feedback loud and clear."
Bahl said Modern Warfare 4 was built around that feedback. "It's getting back to a grounded military shooter. Making it cinematic, making it authentic, and bringing that edge back that Call of Duty is known for," he explained. He also said the main measure of success is whether fans actually like the game, adding that "even if it delivers on sales, if people don't like the game, we've missed the mark."
Bahl also teased that this is the end of a story arc. He described Modern Warfare 4 as "the epic conclusion of this recent series of Modern Warfare," while leaving room for some characters to live on in future games.
What Comes Next
DMZ Early Access starts on Tuesday (October 20th) for the same digital pre-order customers, and Modern Warfare 4 launches in full on Friday (October 23rd) on PS5, Xbox Series X and S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. It is skipping PS4 and Xbox One entirely. PC players should also note that starting with DMZ Early Access, the game will require TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot to be enabled.
Multiplayer launches with 12 core 6v6 maps, dedicated Gunfight maps, several large-scale Big War maps, and a new mode called Kill Block, set in a live-fire training facility that reshapes itself between rounds. If the campaign alone pushed the Steam count past 108,000, launch weekend could tell a very different story than last year.
Do you think Modern Warfare 4 is on track to win back the players Black Ops 7 lost, or is a strong campaign launch not enough to judge it yet?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.