Microsoft Admits Pulling Call of Duty from Steam Was A Huge Failure – And the Numbers Don’t Lie

The legal fight between Microsoft and the FTC over anticompetitive practices on Xbox might have gone in the favor of the giant publisher for now but we do have some humble pie nuggets from the proceedings.

Microsoft, who wants to buy Activision, admitted that Activision pulling their Call of Duty games from Steam was a “resounding failure”.

Not only did that plan fail but, to add insult to injury, Valve’s platform Steam grew by dozens of millions of users to almost double their initial total. Picture above is Gabe Newell, Valve’s CEO, with an expression that probably looks like the one he wore when seeing this tweet below.

Microsoft's documents also says that Activision making Call of Duty on PC a Battle net exclusive from 2018-2021 was a "resounding failure" and did not result in any meaningful increase of active Bnet users. pic.twitter.com/PqROUJ5A3F

— CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) July 13, 2023

The company had hoped that, by forcing gamers to switch to Battle.net to play Call of Duty, they would grow their own platform.

Between 2018 and 2022, that’s exactly what they did but, as you remember, in 2022 they came back to Steam with Call of Duty Modern Warfare II. 

Even though there are millions of dedicated Call of Duty players, moving the franchise on Battle.net did almost nothing for that platform’s user count.

For those who missed the legal proceedings, the government represented by the FTC took Activision Blizzard and Microsoft to court to stop Microsoft from buying the former for $69 billion.

In one of the biggest antitrust suits in recent years, the FTC says that a merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard would stifle competition and limit consumer choices.

Also read: Microsoft Employee Accidentally Reveals Major Notepad Update In Windows 11