Free Fire is often considered to be one of the ‘Founding Fathers’ of the battle royale genre. It launched not too long after PUBG was released in 2017, and it went on to set and smash records in the years that followed. By contrast, Call of Duty’s battle royale platform – Warzone – was released in 2020, and while it enjoyed a strong start, it started to die out relatively fast. In this article, we’re breaking down the comparison of Call of Duty vs Free Fire, figuring out which game is ultimately the better one.
It’s a difficult discussion to have, though. For instance, Free Fire is a mobile-only game, but Warzone doesn’t yet (at the time of publishing) have a mobile variant. Furthermore, Free Fire – despite being a global game – is massively popular in Asia and South-East Asia, while Warzone is much more popular in the Western areas of the world.
But with those facts aside, we’re still going to eagerly debate the Call of Duty vs Free Fire discussion, to see which game is best.
Free Fire Breaks Records
By 2023, ‘Garena’ Free Fire had held the record for the most popular esports tournament in history for more than two years. In May 2021, the Free Fire World Series, which was held in Singapore, pulled in a peak concurrent viewer count of 5,415,990. It was a staggering figure and since then, only League of Legends has come close to topping it, at one time pulling in a peak count of 5,147,701, according to escharts.com.
Since then, Free Fire’s figures have dropped considerably, with the 2022 World Series pulling in a peak of 1,477,000 viewers.
By comparison, the most popular Call of Duty Warzone tournament – a 2021 Twitch Rivals event – topped out at 441,145 viewers. Since then, there has been a decline in viewership as the Warzone esports scene has failed to maintain itself too effectively.
Once upon a time, Warzone almost died, and since then, it has mostly failed to get back on track.
Read More: Best Call of Duty Tournaments in 2023
Warzone Breaks Players
It’s not fair to bring the multiplayer platforms for Call of Duty into this debate of Call of Duty vs Free Fire. That’s why we’re focusing on the battle royale offering – as that’s all Free Fire really has to offer. In 2020, Warzone debuted to an overwhelmingly popular reception, but within two years, all that success had been undone by too many issues in the game. From stability problems to cheaters and from controversial decisions from Activision to content creators leaving the game, there was plenty of bad press to deal with.
In November 2022, Warzone 2.0 was released, introducing an all-new map, experience, and platform to players around the world. By comparison, Free Fire has always remained the same, and it hasn’t really changed at all in the last six years.
It’s tough to figure out how many people are playing Free Fire, unfortunately.
As of July 2021, Free Fire had seen more than 1 billion downloads in the Google Play Store alone. It was claimed in 2019 that the game boasted more than 50 million active daily players. It’s tough to get a solid figure on that, but it’s widely expected that the number hasn’t changed too much by today.
At the time of writing, and using Steam as a representative example, Call of Duty Warzone boasts a 24-hour peak player count of just 90,000 users. Of course, Free Fire is mobile-exclusive, and Warzone is more popular on console platforms, so it’s really tough to lock down exact figures.
And The Experience
So, it’s subjective, but where does it all land in the age-old debate of Call of Duty vs Free Fire?
If we look at the esports figures, we can see that Free Fire is much more valuable. If we take a look at the player numbers, then again, we can see that Free Fire is more popular. It can be argued that Warzone offers a better experience overall, as it’s not being played out on a mobile device, but that again is a subjective claim. There are plenty of people that love playing games on their mobile devices, and it’s why Call of Duty Mobile has racked up hundreds of millions of downloads.
Soon, Call of Duty Warzone Mobile will be released, and then we’ll be able to make a much more interesting comparison between Call of Duty and Free Fire. It’s always difficult comparing two games when they’re so different, and that’s the case here. For instance, Warzone is a 100% first-person shooter game, while Free Fire is almost entirely played from a third-person perspective. It’s things like this that make all the difference when it comes to comparison.
What do you think? Is Free Fire better than Call of Duty, or is Warzone still loaded with potential and may one day become king of all battle royale games?
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