2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Is Blowing Up on Steam Thanks to a Big Sale and Positive Word of Mouth

A generous price drop has seen Call of Duty: Modern Warfare break its own Steam concurrent record over the weekend, hitting an all-new high of 61,667 peak players and making it more popular than last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 on Valve’s PC platform.

Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare successfully rebooted the Call of Duty series, and was followed by the enormously popular battle royale, Warzone, which benfited from stay-at-home gaming amid the pandemic.

While the 2019 FPS usually retails for $59.99, it’s currently available for just $5.99 (£4.99 in the UK or €5.99 in select European countries) courtesy of Steam’s Spring Sale — likely the lowest price it’s ever been on Valve’s digital storefront.

Even when it first debuted on Steam, Modern Warfare only enjoyed modest success, reaching a peak of just 3,500 players on launch day. Up until Friday’s discounted price, even that small player base had essentially fallen away, with only a couple of hundred players online at any one time.

Now, Modern Warfare isn’t just the most-played Call of Duty game on Steam, but it’s enjoying its biggest numbers on Valve’s platform ever, according to SteamDB. And while it’s now nearly seven years old, fans are nonetheless leaving glowing reviews on Steam, with one such happy player writing: “It’s a no-brainer. The campaign is excellent, and there are some nice supplementary PvE modes such as spec ops / survival.”

Indeed, Call of Duty fans are now going back and enjoying Modern Warfare’s campaign all over again. It’s well thought of among the many COD campaigns, for its dark and gritty tone and standout levels, such as Clean House. We thought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare offered “the best CoD campaign in nearly a decade, thanks to fast pacing and great variety,” awarding it 8.2 in IGN’s review.

Modern Warfare’s resurgence comes following the bruising launch of Black Ops 7, which has struggled in sales terms compared to Black Ops 6, a fact that’s reflected in everything from European sales figures to Activision’s own admissions. Of course, none of this takes into account the Game Pass effect (Call of Duty now launches day one on Microsoft’s subscription service, which will no doubt have an impact on sales at least on Xbox consoles). All eyes are now on Activision for the inevitable announcement of this year’s premium Call of Duty game, which is expected to be Modern Warfare 4 from Infinity Ward.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.