2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot was responsible for kickstarting a new era for the long-running military FPS franchise with a notable single-player campaign and strong multiplayer offerings. Soon after, the series’ second attempt at battle royales, Warzone, became an overnight sensation. Now, the Call of Duty juggernaut from the 2010s wants its crown back.

The news that CoD Modern Warfare is rocketing back up the charts might come as a shock, but Steam’s current Spring Sale has a number of impressive deep discounts, and the Modern Warfare reboot has seen its price slashed by a whopping 90 percent, taking it down to only £4.99.

For reference, Call of Duty games rarely go above 75 percent off, no matter how old they are. A good current example is 2012’s Black Ops 2, which is only at 67% (down to £13.19) during the same sale. It makes us wonder what the reasoning behind such a deep discount is, especially when we take into account it’s not part of the current Call of Duty HQ app that houses the most recent CoD entries. For all intents and purposes, Activision considers the first of the new Modern Warfare games “obsolete”, yet here we are.

The fact several recent CoD games are all grouped together on Steam also makes it easier to see how big Modern Warfare is right now versus the rest of the FPS roster: the 2019 release had a 24-hour peak (at the time of writing) of 57,959 players. Meanwhile, the Call of Duty app that includes last year’s Black Ops 7, Black Ops 6, and more has “only” cracked 50,325. These numbers don’t include console players, of course.

It’s no secret Call of Duty’s popularity is lower than Xbox and Activision would like following BO7’s so-so reviews and player reception, yet it remained one of 2025’s top-grossing game releases. If you ask around, you’ll be told Battlefield 6 was last year’s military FPS king, but that game is also battling its own demons now that the post-launch honeymoon is over. At least right now, Modern Warfare has overtaken the concurrent player count of EA’s latest (though BF6’s 24-hour peak is higher), as well.

No matter how you look at it, the data stuns. But it might just be the novelty of Activision doing a super deep discount on Steam for once. The current rumours say MW4 will be 2026’s Call of Duty, so maybe the play here is getting as many newcomers as possible interested in the beginning of this new continuity before marketing goes all-out again and Xbox and Activision try to recover lost ground this fall.