The company confirmed that monthly active users of Activision games have dropped by a third over the past 12 months.
In March 2021, Activision’s games had 150 million monthly active players (at this point, that number is likely dominated by players playing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty Warzone).
In March 2022, Activision had 100 million monthly active players — one-third less than a year ago.
Activision acknowledges the fact that Call of Duty revenue is down year-over-year – due to poor sales of 2021 flagship release Vanguard compared to 2020’s Black Ops Cold War and “lower engagement” in free-to-play games – Play war zone.
But it’s unclear where the missing 50 million players left — whether they ditched Warzone, skipped the annual Call of Duty launch, or both.
Can Activision turn things around? This year will see the launch of another new COD – this time it’s the sequel to 2019’s Modern Warfare.
This year will also see a “reveal” of the new Call of Duty Warzone “experience” — although details on this have been murky.
On the business side of Blizzard, monthly active users continued to decline for a long time. Last November, we reported how Blizzard’s player engagement dropped 13% year over year to 26 million players.
Now, as of March 31, Blizzard’s monthly active users have dropped further to 22 million players.
Activision hopes to turn that around with the launch of the free-to-play Diablo Immortal, which is coming to mobile and PC in June through an open beta.
The announcement of Diablo Immortal’s release date this week comes as the embattled publisher tries to get itself back on track after a devastating year of reports that highlighted allegations of harassment and assault, employee strikes, employee attempts to join Unions, and dissatisfaction with controversial company boss Bobby Kotick.