Five years later, Call of Duty returns to Steam with Modern Warfare 2

The PC version of Call of Duty returns to Steam five years after ditching the platform in favour of Blizzard's Battle.net.

Activision today confirmed Infinity Ward's upcoming shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will release on Steam as well as Battle.net when it comes out on 28th October.

It marks the return of the shooter franchise to Valve's platform five years after Sledgehammer's Call of Duty: WW2 came out in November 2017. That game went down as the last new PC Call of Duty to appear on Steam, with all subsequent mainline games (Black Ops 4, Modern Warfare, Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard), as well as free-to-play battle royale Warzone releasing on Battle.net exclusively.

The PC version of Modern Warfare 2 is developed by Activision-owned Beenox, and promises a "fully optimised experience", Activision said.

The move back to Steam will no doubt go down well among the PC gaming community, given the platform's popularity and feature set. Modern Warfare 2's launch on Valve's platform also means we'll get real-time concurrent players data, which means we will get a good sense of how popular it proves post-launch.

Call of Duty games have in recent years had cross-platform play between console and PC. Activision has yet to say whether Battle.net and Steam players of Modern Warfare 2 will be able to play together.

For more, check out Eurogamer's just-published Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 preview.