Modern Warfare 4 Tops Steam While Battlefield 6 Waits on Game Pass

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2026

Here is the headline, and then here is the asterisk — because this story needs both. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 sat on top of Steam's global Top Sellers chart when the chart was checked on Sunday, October 18, in the middle of its campaign early-access window. That is a real achievement for a game that does not fully launch until October 23 and that, right now, only digital preorder customers can actually play. People are not just interested in Modern Warfare 4. They are paying full price, early, in numbers large enough to lead the biggest PC storefront on Earth.

Now the asterisk, and it matters. The eye-catching player number attached to this launch — a peak of 108,551 concurrent players on Steam today, as tracked in Games2Egypt's chart reporting — does not belong to Modern Warfare 4 alone. It belongs to the shared Call of Duty application, the single launcher that houses the new release alongside Black Ops 7 and Warzone. Everyone playing any of those games counts toward the same total. So when you see the number shared around as proof that "the MW4 campaign" drew six figures on Steam, read it the honest way: the Call of Duty ecosystem is very active during MW4's early-access weekend, and MW4 is plainly the reason for the surge. That is still a good story. It just is not the same story as a campaign-only headcount, and the distinction is the difference between reporting a launch and inflating one.

Why the shared-app math cuts both ways

To be fair to the number, there is a version of this comparison that flatters MW4 even with the shared app. CharlieIntel noted on X that the Call of Duty app's roughly 108,500 peak during campaign early access surpassed Black Ops 7's full-game Steam peak of about 100,500, a figure Eteknix also reported from SteamDB data. Think about that: a single-player campaign, available only to people who preordered digitally, pushed the shared app past the high-water mark of a complete game's launch. Even shared, even blended with Warzone's always-on population, that is a signal about appetite for this particular entry — appetite the series needed after a bruising open beta, which Tech Insider reported peaked at around 113,000 Steam players alongside a 45% negative review ratio. The beta left a mark. The campaign's early reception, by contrast, has been strikingly warm, with early Steam feedback running strongly positive and critics calling the campaign one of the series' best in years.

The campaign itself is a full 16-mission story that moves from a North Korean invasion of the Korean Peninsula to New York, Paris and Mumbai, with Captain Price running a personal, off-the-books war in parallel. It opened on October 16 for digital preorders of the $69.99 Standard Edition and the $99.99 Vault Edition. DMZ early access follows on October 20 for the same preorder crowd, and the full launch — multiplayer included, with 12 new 6v6 maps at launch — lands October 23 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. No PlayStation 4 or Xbox One versions exist. PC players should also budget space: the published PC requirements call for 115GB of SSD storage, which is the kind of number that quietly deletes two other games off your drive.

The Game Pass twist: one shooter for sale, one shooter in the catalog

The strangest and most interesting part of this launch is the subscription math. Modern Warfare 4 is not coming to Game Pass on day one. Reporting around the launch puts its eventual Game Pass arrival far out — holiday 2027 in the timelines being discussed — a sharp break from the recent pattern of mainline Call of Duty titles launching into the service, a change outlets including GameRant and Tech Insider have covered as a deliberate shift toward standalone sales. If you want MW4 this month, the options are $69.99 or patience.

Meanwhile, its direct rival is already sitting in the catalog. Battlefield 6 joined Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass on October 13, through EA Play, exactly ten days before Modern Warfare 4's launch. Sit with the oddity of that for a second: Microsoft owns Activision, the publisher of Call of Duty, and Microsoft's own subscription service spent MW4's launch window handing subscribers the competing military shooter at no extra cost. Battlefield 6 is no charity case, either — per Circana figures cited by GameRant, it was the best-selling game in the United States through the end of 2025, ahead of NBA 2K26, Borderlands 4, Monster Hunter Wilds and Black Ops 7. One of 2025's biggest games is in the subscription this week, and the new Call of Duty is full price. That is a genuine fork in the road for shooter fans, and it is not an accident of timing anyone at either publisher failed to notice.

What launch week will actually tell us

So what do we know, honestly, on October 18? We know MW4 is selling: a Top Sellers lead during a preorder-only window is measured in money, not curiosity. We know the Call of Duty app is busy, and that its early-access peak clearing Black Ops 7's full-launch peak is a legitimate point in MW4's favor, with the shared-app caveat attached. We know the campaign is landing better than the beta did. What we do not know yet is the number that will define the launch — the full-release peak on October 23, when multiplayer opens, the preorder wall comes down, and the shared app's total can be compared against the roughly 315,000 peak Black Ops 6 set in late 2024. That is the bar. Everything this weekend is the run-up.

And hovering over all of it is the value question Microsoft has created for its own biggest franchise. A subscriber can play Battlefield 6 tonight for nothing beyond the subscription, then decide on October 23 whether Modern Warfare 4 is worth $69.99 and 115 gigabytes. A year ago, that decision did not exist. This year, it is the whole ballgame — and the Steam chart says a remarkable number of players have already made it. For the full week ahead, see the 27 games coming to Xbox October 19-23 and browse Previously's games coverage.