Call of Duty’s Battle.net exclusivity was “a resounding failure”

As part of the Microsoft FTC injunction hearings, many internal documents have been made public, revealing a whole bunch of juicy details on these gaming companies’ inner workings. As part of a document shared by Microsoft, the console manufacturer claimed that Call of Duty’s Battle.net launcher exclusivity was “a resounding failure.”

As shared by the Call of Duty-focused publication CharlieINTEL, one of the many documents sent by Microsoft to the courts for the hearing detailed just how successful – or unsuccessful – Activision’s decision to make Call of Duty exclusive to their Battle.net launcher on PC was, saying:

“Activision's attempt to take PC digital sales of Call of Duty exclusive to its Battle.net platform was a resounding failure. Before 2018, Activision sold digital versions of PC Call of Duty titles on Valve's successful Steam platform. In 2018, Activision decided to take the game off of Steam and make it exclusively available on Battle.net—largely in an effort to attract users to, and grow, Activision's own platform. Battle.net's monthly active users (MAUs) remained relatively flat during the period when it had exclusive access to digital sales of Call of Duty on PC, from 2018 through 2022.”

With Activision ultimately choosing to return to Steam last year, it was clear that the Battle.net plans did not pan out how they had hoped. That said, it is interesting to see the terminology used to describe the move. Only one Call of Duty game remains exclusive to Battle.net. Hopefully Black Ops 4 finds its way over to Steam.

KitGuru says: What do you think of Microsoft’s statement? Are you surprised? Did you use Battle.net at all? Let us know down below.

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