RIP Call Of Duty Black Ops

A new year means a new "Call of Duty" game, but this one isn't being met with much excitement. "Black Ops 7" hit the gaming scene in November, but when fans showed up to check out the new game, they were pretty let down by what they found.

Players have been baffled by some moments in the "Black Ops 7" campaign, and they've been frustrated by the game's multiplayer experience, too. Since its post-release peak, "Black Ops 7" has already lost nearly half its playerbase. Much like how people fled "Borderlands 4" quickly, gamers just don't seem to have an interest in sticking around for "Black Ops 7."

In a year marked by so many disappointing sequels, it's surprising that nobody played some of the best video games of 2025 instead. Flagship series like "Call of Duty" eat up a ton of attention online, but with "Black Ops 7," that trend might start to change. The game's reviews are pretty lackluster, but the player count numbers are borderline disastrous. "Call of Duty" has had some rough releases in the past, but "Black Ops 7" is a new low for a series that should start genuinely worrying about its future.

From the outside looking in, it's obvious that "Call of Duty: Black Ops 7" is a new low for the franchise. Back in 2010, the "Black Ops" series kicked off and breathed some new life into "Call of Duty," and the first "Black Ops" game is still the most critically beloved. On Metacritic, the game scored in the high 80s, and so far, not a single sequel has beaten it. With that said, most of the "Black Ops" games received Metacritic scores in the 80s — aside from "Black Ops Cold War," which ranked in the mid 70s.

"Black Ops 7" has officially broken that streak of high Metacritic scores. Critics don't outright hate the game, but they aren't exactly singing its praises, either. "Black Ops 7" scored a 67 from critics on Metacritic, and the general player score is much, much lower.

Setting aside the numbers for a moment, gamers in online discussions also typically agree that the "Black Ops" series peaked early in its lifecycle. Fans are particularly fond of "Black Ops 2," which debuted all the way back in 2012. Now it seems like "Black Ops" may never recapture that early gaming magic.

Critic reviews and online fan discussions aren't our only tools for measuring the success of "Black Ops 7." Like so many other games with PC playerbases, there's a limited amount of hard data to examine about the game's popularity with actual players. Unfortunately, on that front, "Black Ops 7" is also on track to become a massive disappointment for the series.

"Black Ops 7" landed in players' hands on November 14th. Two days later the game hit a peak Steam player count of just over 100,000. That is a far cry from the peak player count for "Black Ops 6," which topped 300,000. Even more concerning, all those "Black Ops 7" players didn't stick around for very long. 

A month after the game's release, the player count had dropped well over 50 percent, and barely over 50,000 people were still playing the game on a daily basis. Several games have lost their entire playerbase in 2025, but things haven't gotten quite that bad (yet) for "Black Ops 7." Still, the massive dip in players doesn't bode well for the game's future, and it's not an encouraging sign for a potential "Black Ops 8."

2025 has been a big year for first-person shooters. With the release of both "Battlefield 6" and "Black Ops 7," FPS fans got to see two mega-franchises go head-to-head for the first time in years. The games debuted about a month apart from each other, and gamers everywhere were excited to see which title would come out on top.

Before either game was released, there were clear signs that "Call of Duty" should be very worried about "Battlefield 6." For one thing, "Battlefield" fans were primed for a franchise comeback after years of waiting, while "Call of Duty" fans have gotten new installments in their favorite franchise almost every year. Add to that the fact that "Black Ops 6" left a sour taste in the mouths of many players, and it's obvious this year was a chance for "Battlefield" to really shine.

Now that both games have hit the market, we can compare the games more clearly. Reports indicate that "Black Ops 7" became the most-played game in the United States in the month after its release, but on the other hand, "Battlefield 6" ultimately made more money. That relative lack of sales could be a sign that interest in "Call of Duty," or at least the "Black Ops" series, is beginning to wane. It's hard to say that there was a definitive winner in the 2025 FPS battle, but "Call of Duty" should still be worried about "Battlefield" as a competitor going forward.

Let's be honest, no one thinks of "Call of Duty" as a story-focused franchise. The real reason people play "Call of Duty" is to dive into the multiplayer, but some of the series' installments have featured genuinely spectacular stories. The first "Black Ops" game, for example, featured a mind-bending story that still stands out as a franchise highlight more than a decade later. That set a high bar that arguably no "Black Ops" sequel has lived up to, but the "Black Ops 7" campaign is particularly disappointing by comparison.

Players have taken to the internet to make their complaints about the "Black Ops 7" campaign known. On a gameplay level, most players don't agree with the direction that the game has taken. They aren't fans of the semi-open world level design, the XP mechanics, or the seemingly out-of-place boss battles.

All that lackluster gameplay would be tolerable if the game had a strong story, but it's a failure on that front too. Fans complain that the campaign's narrative mostly spins its wheels to grind gamers toward a cliffhanger ending meant to entice players to check out the game's seasonal content drops. New seasons are supposed to continue the story of the campaign, but the very first "Black Ops 7" unceremoniously kills off the game's main villain in a cutscene. Fans were baffled by the storytelling decision, which has mostly ended any remaining interest people might have had in the game's ongoing plot.

The "Black Ops 7" campaign has left players wanting, and many of them aren't satisfied by the game's multiplayer either. Shortly after its release, "Black Ops 7" set a "Call of Duty" record by earning the lowest user score on Metacritic in the franchise's history. Many of those reviews cite the game's disappointing campaign, but a huge portion of the backlash "Black Ops 7" is currently facing can be directly tied to problems players are having with the game's multiplayer mode. 

There are some things that "Black Ops 7" has gotten right. Online fans are saying that the multiplayer maps are a huge improvement over the previous game, and, in general, players are enjoying the new approach to matchmaking lobbies. Sadly, those are about the only two things that fans think are working well. The major issue that most players bring up, however, is much more fundamental to the overall gameplay experience: "Black Ops 7" has some serious netcode issues. 

In practice, that means people are getting unexpectedly killed through cover, lagging out at key moments in a firefight, and, in general, are stuck fighting against the game's issues more than they're fighting other players. Players can't appreciate any of the genuinely good gameplay mechanics in "Black Ops 7," because the server issues are leaving them wondering what other games they can play with their friends right now. 

If the underwhelming reception for "Black Ops 7" was a one-off, then maybe "Call of Duty" fans could rest easily. Unfortunately, all of the problems with the current game are highlighting an ongoing issue that the franchise is facing: "Black Ops 7" is the latest indicator that the series as a whole may be in decline.

Taking a look back at the franchise's history, it's easy to see that most of the best "Call of Duty" games were released over a decade ago. It's tempting to assume that fans are being blinded by nostalgia, but there's some real data that suggest gamers aren't as excited by "Call of Duty" as they once were.

 In the modern era of the franchise, fewer and fewer players have been showing up to check out the newest game. When "Modern Warfare 2" hit the scene in 2022, it set a new concurrent player record for the series with a peak of nearly 500,000. Those numbers fell off somewhat quickly, but the more concerning fact is that every new release since has reached significantly lower peaks than their predecessor. "Black Ops 6" topped out at just over 300,000 players, and those numbers fell off even more quickly. 

"Black Ops 7," as we've already pointed out, capped at over 100,000 players and lost almost half of those within a month. There is visibly a declining interest in the series, and "Call of Duty" needs to make serious changes to turn that around before fans really do say "rest in peace" to this relatively old shooter franchise.