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MW4's campaign early access went live for pre-order players on 16 October
Modern Warfare 4's campaign early access is "Very Positive" on Steam, with around 92% of 3,000+ reviews thumbs up. That makes it the best-received Call of Duty on Steam since Black Ops III. Multiplayer hasn't even started yet, though.
MW4's campaign early access went live for pre-order players on 16 October
Steam reviews are "Very Positive": 2,838 of 3,089 positive (about 92%) as of Monday NZT
It's the best-rated CoD on Steam since 2015's Black Ops III, which CoD's last four releases weren't even close to
Complaints are mostly about the CoD HQ launcher, TPM/Secure Boot anti-cheat checks and some PC performance
DMZ early access starts 20 October, and the full launch with multiplayer is 23 October NZ time
Hold onto something: people on Steam are saying nice things about a Call of Duty game. Modern Warfare 4‘s campaign early access went live for pre-order players on 16 October, and the Steam reviews are sitting at “Very Positive”. As of Monday morning NZT, 2,838 of 3,089 reviews are positive, or about 92%.
For a series that has spent the last few years in the Steam bin, that’s a big deal. Here’s the official campaign trailer if you’ve somehow avoided it:
SteamDB uses a weighted rating that drags games with fewer reviews towards 50%, so it reads lower than Steam’s own percentage. Insider Gaming had MW4 at 81.15% when it first spotted the trend with around 900 reviews, already the best-rated Call of Duty on Steam since 2015’s Black Ops III. TechPowerUp had it at 85.78% a day later. Here’s how the recent ones stack up on SteamDB, per Insider Gaming:
At the rate it’s going, MW4 could pass Black Ops III and become the best-rated modern CoD on Steam before launch day.
We went through the most-upvoted Steam reviews. The praise is almost all about the campaign: darker than recent entries, great-looking, runs well, and “the best campaign in years” comes up over and over. Plenty of reviewers open with some version of “I can’t believe I’m saying this about CoD”.
The negative reviews are mostly about everything around the game:
It’s on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2. It’s also on our release schedule.
Fair play to Infinity Ward. After Black Ops 7 got hammered, Activision promised a grounded, “no BS” Modern Warfare, and on the campaign at least, it looks like they’ve delivered. Getting CoD players on Steam to say anything nice is harder than winning a 1v4.
But slow down before you crown it. These reviews come from people who paid extra to play a single-player campaign a week early, so they’re the most likely to love it. Multiplayer is where CoD lives or dies, and nobody’s played it yet. The real test is the end of the month: once the lobbies fill up, the cheaters turn up, and the first season’s store appears. As one TechPowerUp commenter put it, the monetisation is still loading.
And seriously, Activision, ditch the CoD HQ launcher. It’s 2026. A game you paid NZ$120 for shouldn’t feel like DLC inside another app.
Playing the campaign already, or waiting for multiplayer on the 23rd? Let us know in the comments, or come and squad up in the GetRekt Discord.
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