Skip to main content

Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Modern Warfare 2 best Call of Duty Steam launch to date

Fired up.

Modern Warfare 2 had its full release today, and it has already trounced all other Call of Duty releases on Steam.

At the time of writing, there are currently 154,297 players battling it out with Captain Price and co (via SteamDB).

Meanwhile, the game's current all-time player peak is sitting at a lofty 238,522 after just a few hours. It's currently the fifth most played game on Steam, behind the perennial Counter-Strike, Dota 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and Apex Legends.

The PC launch trailer for Modern Warfare 2.Watch on YouTube

To put that in perspective, the next most successful Call of Duty title in terms of player numbers on Steam (outside of Modern Warfare 2's beta from earlier in the year) is Black Ops' Multiplayer, which had a peak concurrent player count of 118,593.

The top 15 Call of Duty releases on Steam.

That is not to say this release has been without its niggles.

Xbox and PC players have reported that their ability to disable crossplay in Modern Warfare 2 has disappeared. And, while Xbox players can get around this by disabling crossplay at the system level, those playing via a PC currently have no other options to change this.

Read this next