‘Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0’ surpasses 25 million players less than a week after launch

“Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0” has only been out for less than a week, but Raven Software announced that the game has already hit a major milestone. The newly released online free-to-play first-person shooter was confirmed to have reached 25 million players on Monday — just five days after its launch.

Just as Activision expected, the momentum of the “Call of Duty” franchise was bound to continue with the release of “Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0” last week. Earlier this month, the publisher announced that this year’s premium title, “Modern Warfare II,” became the fastest game in the series after reaching $1 billion in global sell-through in 10 days.

It was also apparent that the publisher had been anticipating this level of response to the release of “Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0.” It was previously announced that servers for the first “Warzone” game would be temporarily taken down so that Raven Software can focus its resources on the launch of the follow-up game. It will be available to play again on Monday, Nov. 28.

At this rate, and with a holiday weekend approaching, “Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0” has a very likely chance to beat the record of the first “Warzone” game. It was released on March 10, 2020, and surpassed 100 million players globally with 28.8 billion matches in April of the following year.

The launch of “Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0,” despite its very early success, was not entirely smooth-sailing. Raven Software’s Trello board for the game already lists several issues observed on various features.

There were also reports that some players who did not purchase “Modern Warfare II” were seemingly being locked out of the free-to-play shooter. The developer has yet to address the complaints about this particular issue. But NME suggests the problem Raven Software listed on Trello as a bug affecting the Play Again button may have something to do with it.

Several “Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0” players have also reported the early emergence of invisible opponents. This issue may sound familiar to long-time “Warzone” players, as the first game also suffered from a glitch that made players invisible in some instances.

Some videos have been posted online, seemingly demonstrating the presence of invisible players. But it is still unclear how many players are affected, and Raven Software has yet to address the matter.