Activision Lost A Third Of Its Active Players In Past Year

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Monthly active users of Activision games fell by a third over the past 12 months, the company has confirmed.

In March 2021, Activision had 150 million monthly active players across its games (at this point, a figure likely dominated by those playing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty Warzone).

In March 2022, Activision had 100 million monthly active players - a third less than a year ago.

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Activision has acknowledged the fact Call of Duty revenues were down year-on-year - something it has blamed on both the poorer sales of 2021's flagship launch Vanguard versus 2020's Black Ops Cold War, but also on "lower engagement" in the free-to-play Warzone.

But it's unclear where the missing 50 million players have departed from - whether they have given up on Warzone, or skipped the annual Call of Duty release, or a bit of both.

Can Activision turn things around? This year will see the launch of yet another new COD - and this time its a sequel to 2019's Modern Warfare.

This year will also see the "reveal" of a new Call of Duty Warzone "experience" - though details on this are being kept vague.

Over on the Blizzard side of the business, monthly active users have continued their long decline. Last November, we reported on how Blizzard's player engagement had dropped 13 percent year-on-year to 26 million players.

Now, Blizzard monthly active users have dipped further to 22 million players, as of 31st March.

Activision will look to turn this around with the launch of the free-to-play Diablo Immortal, which is set to arrive for mobile and PC via open beta in June.

The announcement of Diablo Immortal's release date this week comes as the embattled publisher seeks to put itself back on track following a devastating year of reports which have highlighted harassment and assault allegations, employee walkouts, staff attempts at unionisation, and frustrations with controversial company boss Bobby Kotick.

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