Activision Blizzard Q1 2023 report reveals massive drop in player count

Activision Blizzard releases an earnings report every quarter and recently published its Q1 2023 report. It revealed that the video game company had lost millions of players compared to Q4 of 2022. To put salt in the wound, the UK government also announced yesterday that it had blocked Microsoft's attempt to buy Activision Blizzard.

The Call of Duty publisher enjoyed a few significant accomplishments last year, including the release of the fastest-selling game in the CoD franchise. This boosted the company's player count considerably in 2022. Yet, they were unable to sustain the numbers due to negligence in the quality of the updates released for the title.

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Activision Blizzard's player count dropped by more than 20 million on all games since last quarter

Per the official Activision Blizzard earnings report, the total active player count of all publishers under the company dropped from 389 million in Q4 of 2022 to 368 million in Q1 of 2023. This includes King, Blizzard, and Activision games.

Although Call of Duty's poor performance is not to be entirely blamed for this plummet, it is clear that Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2 have failed to deliver on their expectations in 2023. With 111 million Activision players at the end of 2022, the number has come down to just 98 million in 2023, contributing the second most to the drop.

While Activision lost 13 million players, Blizzard's count dropped by 18 million gamers. Overwatch 2's popularity has also decreased considerably since its launch in October 2022, which adds to Blizzard's woes.

However, as the release date of Diablo 4 gets close, set to launch on June 6, Blizzard's player count will most likely see an increase in Q2 2023. Furthermore, as Warzone 2 Ranked launches next month, Activision's number of players is also predicted to boost.

King is the only publisher with an increase in player count in Q1 of 2023 compared to Q4 of 2022. The total number of players increased by 10 million, from 233 million to 243 million. Candy Crush Saga, Farm Heroes Saga, and Bubble Witch 3 Saga are some free-to-play games published by the company. They are available on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, thus catering to a wide audience.