Arguably, Call of Duty has released an annual title since 2007, and for a time in 2010, so did its main competitor Battlefield, which took a break before returning with Battlefield 6 earlier this year.
Only the real ones will remember the lobby on Christmas Day with an influx of level 1 players and Double XP all weekend regardless of the annual COD.
Each of these years, thousands of kids, teenagers, and adults make either Call of Duty or Battlefield their biggest Christmas wish, often leading to a massive influx of new players on Christmas Day, seemingly granted their wishes.
Yeah, about that…
Judging by the player count data available on SteamDB, Christmas seems to have done little to help revive Battlefield 6 or Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, both of which struggled with concurrent players either at launch (Black Ops 7) or in the months following (Battlefield 6).
Battlefield 6 player count at all-time low after winter offensive update fails
The Winter Offensive update was not very well received. Of course yes. Quite a large part of the game is broken.
The end result is two live service games seemingly jostling together with a very muted player base.
Both titles were heavily discounted and appear to have had little impact
At the time of writing, Battlefield 6 has 70,527 active players, up from half of the 40,000 the game dipped into just days before. Its 24-hour peak is 99,369, which is a far cry from the all-time high of 747,440 players that appeared at launch.
As for Christmas Day itself, the game was able to shoot from around 75,000 players to just under 100,000. However, within a few hours, that number returned to its normal trends.
As for Black Ops 7, there are currently 44,396 players joining the game. Specifically, 44,396 players are involved in the Call of Duty app in some way because everything is stored there.
It's unclear how much of this is on Black Ops 7, but given the poor reviews, it's safe to assume not a ton.
Black Ops 7's 24-hour peak is 51,017 players, and it didn't quite peak between Christmas Day and Christmas Day due to the new influx of players. In fact, if you look at things over a weekly schedule, the game was more popular almost a week ago on Sunday (62,442 players) than it is right now.
Before Christmas, Black Ops 7 was up to 50 percent off its suggested retail price, which historically has almost never happened. Meanwhile, Battlefield 6 was the main recipient of sales during Black Friday and is even now on sale at various retailers for just $39.99.
Aside from giving the game away for free, it's unclear what else Battlefield 6 or Black Ops 7 need to do to return to good video game contributions. Based on the player counts above, it doesn't seem like many players are asking for either title or Santa.
- Released
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October 10, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and gore, intense violence, strong language, in-app purchases, user interaction
- Developers
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Battlefield Studios
Asking Santa about a Pokemon game makes me feel like a kid again
Trying to convince Santa to help me catch everyone for Christmas makes me feel nostalgic.
