Players escape CoD – Activsion lost 50 million players in one year

Gloomy quarterly report presented.

Activision Blizzard released yesterday a quarterly report for the period January-March 2022. It is not a particularly cheerful read for the gaming giant’s followers – it made less money and lost massive amounts of players.

Revenue for the company fell to $ 1.77 billion for the first quarter of the year, compared to $ 2.23 billion for the same period last year. That is a decrease of about 22 percent.

At the same time, the number of players in the company’s three subsidiaries plummeted: Activision, Blizzard and King. In the period January-March 2022, the company had a total of 372 million active players per month, compared to 435 million in the same period in 2021.

It looks worst for Activision, which was forced to bow by a 50 percent reduction in the number of players. On March 31, 2021, 150 million players were listed, but at the same time in 2022, only 100 million were left – that is, 50 million fewer in one year. And because CoD is Activison’s by far largest series, the race can hardly be interpreted as anything other than lousy CoD: Vanguardsales and player flight from the free to play lyre CoD: Warzone.

Blizzard also saw a shrinking number of players: 22 million quarters 1 in 2022, compared to 27 million the year before. The same fate befell the Swede Candy Crushcreator King: 250 million during the year, compared to 258 the year before.

But Activision Blizzard does not throw in the towel, but continues to sit well. This year we get CoD: Modern Warfare 2 (sequel to the 2019 popular CoD-release), WoW-retroexpansion Wrath of the Lich King Classic and Diablo Immortal (released June 2). In the future, a new one Warzone based on the latest CoDtechnique, Overwatch 2 and the colossus Diablo 4.

This summer, it is also expected that the announcement of Microsoft’s bid to take over Activision Blizzard will be approved, a deal worth a round of 68 billion dollars, a little over 660 billion kronor. If / when the deal is done, it will be highly interesting to see what Microsoft does to polish the company’s reputation, which has been hard hit by accusations of poor working conditions and outdated work culture among some employees in recent years. Hopefully, in the end, it provides better, more fun games.