Six years into esports journalism, Jack covers everything from Rocket League to VALORANT. Hard-stuck in Diamond in both, he’s at least reached Supersonic Legend in getting your favorite pros to say what they’re really thinking. Jack's work can currently be seen on Esports Insider, Hotspawn and GAMINGbible/SPORTbible. He has also previously featured on GGRecon and Dexerto.
Olivia Richman is a seasoned esports journalist who has worked with Inven Global, Esports Illustrated, Esports.gg, and more. As an editor and writer at Esports Insider, she loves telling unique esports stories, especially within the FGC. When not working and gaming, Olivia loves collecting Kirby plush, eating sushi, and driving her cars at the track.
Image Credit: Activision It was the face of gaming during a pandemic that bred a need to socialize and escape reality. Although the immersive dystopia was a war-torn landscape called Verdansk, Call of Duty: Warzone quickly became a haven for friendship, camaraderie, and alliances.
The promised land of competitive battle royales dawned with every parachute glide, as even the most casual of players scratched a competitive itch in Warzone; harboring equal opportunities to win as a slow-paced ghillie sniper in the bushes or a run-and-gun demon meant that part-time players were rewarded in their four-stacked evening playthroughs, and the 24/7 grinders hit their mark more than not.
The blueprint was there for Warzone to go on and dominate the battle royale world that had erupted through Fortnite, and the first year of the Call of Duty spin-off hit the nail on the head.
But that was over half a decade ago, and the once world’s most popular online title is now a distant memory for many.
Now, Warzone’s heartbeat whimpers, and it needs to swallow its pride and adapt if it doesn’t want to flatline. It’s time for esports to be championed.
Since its overwhelmingly impressive launch saw millions of daily users drop into the hell-hole of Verdansk, Activision has been hellbent on keeping Warzone accessible to the masses.
The developers have been hoping to chase those glory days where it can fleece its various wacky crossovers and tap into the microtransaction gold mine; the Call of Duty makers have tried to do everything from reviving Verdansk and Blackout, new maps, and nostalgic meta throwbacks, all in aid of trying to reel back in the wider audience.
Back in 2020, Warzone was estimated to have 13 million daily logins and was proud to have hit 100 million unique users just 13 months after its launch. While its concurrent console figures were never shared, Steam (then the least popular platform among Battle.net, Xbox, and PlayStation) peaked at 488,000 concurrent players during the Modern Warfare 2 launch, suggesting that nearly 2 million players were reached.
Image Credit: Activision Nowadays, Warzone achieves a small fraction of that. Steam numbers peaked at just 50,405 in June 2026, just over ten percent of what it saw five years ago – while it’s true that we can’t check PlayStation and Xbox counts, it’s a damning indictment of how hard the title has fallen off.
In comparison, Apex Legends hit a two-year peak in May 2026 with a Steam count of 324,964; PUBG: Battlegrounds stands strong with over a million peak players in March 2026, while Fortnite still pulls in gargantuan figures of over 4 million peak players in June 2026.
It goes to prove that battle royales can stand the test of time, and the blame lies with…