The numbers from the opening weeks of both shooters make for an awkward conversation for Activision and a celebratory one for Embark Studios. ARC Raiders surged on Steam to roughly 481,966 concurrent players while Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 peaked at about 100,332 on Steam during the same weekend. Those raw Steam figures are blunt instruments but useful. They show that, at least on Valve’s storefront, ARC Raiders is drawing far more immediate attention than Black Ops 7. That Steam performance aligns with other indicators of interest, such as Twitch viewership, where ARC Raiders has generally been ahead.
There are important caveats. Call of Duty is distributed across multiple PC storefronts and is on PC Game Pass. Those factors fragment and obscure how many people are actually playing, because a large portion of Playtime could be coming from Game Pass subscribers rather than direct Steam buyers or concurrent Steam players. Xbox also reported Black Ops 7 as part of its November Game Pass lineup, which muddies simple Steam comparisons and helps explain why the 100K Steam peak does not tell the whole story.
Historical context matters too. Last year, Black Ops 6 reached a Steam peak of about 315,000 concurrent players around launch under similar multi-platform conditions. By that yardstick Black Ops 7 is down on Steam relative to its predecessor even with Game Pass and Battle.net in play. So the picture looks like this. On PC, specifically Steam, ARC Raiders is the bigger success right now. Across all platforms combined, Black Ops 7 still probably has the edge because Call of Duty is console-heavy and benefits from multiple storefronts and Game Pass. But the gap is smaller than many would have expected, and that alone is a notable development for a new IP.
For readers who want a deeper look at how ARC Raiders performed on Steam and the questions around its monetization, the internal coverage of its sales is appropriate and explains some of the Steam momentum. The larger business implication is simple. A surprise hit on Steam like ARC Raiders can change market storytelling for a year. For Call of Duty, lower Steam numbers and softer interest compared with prior launches suggest the franchise is not immune to competition, and publishers will watch whether that Steam gap narrows or widens as new content and seasonal updates arrive.
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