Modern Warfare 2 beta was the biggest in Call of Duty history

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 — (Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Activision has announced that the Modern Warfare 2 beta was the largest playtest in Call of Duty history, and the devs at Infinity Ward have detailed some of the planned improvements to the final game based on player feedback.

While Activision did not provide specific numbers, the Modern Warfare 2 beta had more players, more hours played, and more matches played than any other beta in the series' history. The stat combines players, playtime, and matches across PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, and PC, according to the company's announcement.

The one set of numbers we can confirm is the beta's concurrent Steam player count. The open beta peaked with 168,330 players in-game at once, as SteamDB shows. That's right around the peak you'd expect for a beta from a major series - the Battlefield 2042 reached 156k players a year ago - though this stat notably does not include any PC players who got into the Modern Warfare 2 beta through Activision's own Battle.net.

Developer Infinity Ward notes that there are some changes coming for issues players noted over the course of the beta. They're aiming to have improvements to the balance of footstep audio and enemy visibility in time for launch, as well as tweaks for disbanding lobbies. They're also looking into refinements for shoulder-swapping in the third-person mode, and AI improvements for Invasion mode.

There's been a lot of Modern Warfare 2 play around the offices, and we're both shocked at how good third-person mode is and how much we enjoy being forced to slow down.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.