Call of Duty and Overwatch publisher Activision Blizzard has lost millions of players compared to this time last year, but despite the decline it has grown its developer pool by 25%.
During its latest earnings results, Activision Blizzard revealed that monthly active users – categorized as anyone accessing one of the games in that time period – fell from 372 million at the end of March 2022 to 361 million in the end of June.
This decline continues the publisher’s downward trend, as the number of monthly active users on June 30 last year was 408 million and has been declining fairly steadily since then. There are some mitigating circumstances – Activision Blizzard has had an extremely quiet release schedule of late, partying to game delays and a natural drop in players following the COVID lockdown.
However, the drop in player numbers hasn’t stopped Activision Blizzard from investing in its development teams, as the report also states that it has grown significantly since last June.
“During the second quarter, our teams made solid progress across a broad range of content across established franchises,” it said. “We continue to increase investment in our creative resources to meet demand for our content – our development headcount at the end of the second quarter grew 25% year-over-year.”
With the ongoing Call of Duty franchise (albeit on a reported one-year hiatus), Overwatch 2, Diablo 4 and more in development, Activision is clearly looking to bounce back from this quieter period by adding more developers to its projects and ensure new games arrive soon.
Every IGN Call of Duty review
Call of Duty: Vanguard, part of Activision Blizzard’s flagship franchise, underperformed last year, with the company telling investors in May that the game’s “World War II setting did not resonate with some of our community.”
It has also faced heavy criticism and been presented with several lawsuits in the past year over the “frat boy culture” that allegedly exists within the walls of Activision Blizzard. The state of California started the first lawsuit, which spawned several more.
For a full timeline of events since then, including Xbox’s intention to acquire Activision Blizzard, check out IGN’s story here.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He’ll be talking about The Witcher all day.
Add Comment