Modern Warfare 4's Steam reviews slide from 91% to 62% positive as multiplayer opens

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launched in full on October 23 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Switch 2, with Infinity Ward switching multiplayer on a few hours early. Steam reviews have soured since. From October 16 to 21, when only the campaign and DMZ were playable, 91.5% of 5,186 reviews were positive. On October 22, as multiplayer started going live, the share dropped to 76.2%. Across October 23 and 24 it fell to 62.5% of 2,106 reviews, according to the daily breakdown on the game's Steam page, checked at 3:58 p.m. ET on Saturday, October 24.

Less than a week ago, Modern Warfare 4 held the best Call of Duty rating on Steam in a decade, but that number only reflected the campaign and the digital preorder crowd. Steam doesn't split reviews by mode, so there's no way to show the drop comes from multiplayer. What the numbers do show is that it lines up with multiplayer going live and with the arrival of players who hadn't preordered. The lifetime score is holding up for now. Across all 7,940 Steam reviews, Modern Warfare 4 sits at 82.5% positive, because the 5,186 reviews from the campaign week still outweigh those posted since October 22.

What players are unhappy about

The loudest complaint is skill-based matchmaking, or SBMM. The game estimates how good you are from your recent performance and puts you in lobbies with players at a similar level. Critics say that turns every match into a full-effort grind with no easy rounds. On October 22, Charlie Intel, which Push Square calls the series' biggest fan site, summed up the first hours with three gripes, as Push Square reported. The maps weren't very good, spawns were still broken after the beta and SBMM was turned all the way up. Charlie Intel did praise the campaign and DMZ.

Dexerto rounded up more posts on X making the same point. One player described a kill, die, repeat loop. Another said every lobby feels like a Call of Duty League final. A third added spawns and maps to the list and said he'd quit the series after this one. Spawns decide where you re-enter the map after dying, and a bad one drops you in an enemy's sightline before you can react. They were already a sore spot in the August beta.

Players who want to avoid SBMM also have nowhere to go. As Insider Gaming reported, Charlie Intel found no Open Matchmaking playlists at launch. Black Ops 7 offered that option, which ignores skill when filling lobbies, but every Modern Warfare 4 playlist runs on the Standard system from the beta, which does factor skill in. YouTuber TheXclusiveAce says some playlists under Popular quietly use looser matchmaking and keep the same players together from one match to the next, even though they aren't labeled that way.

Infinity Ward's response

Joe Cecot, multiplayer creative director at Infinity Ward, told IGN he isn't sure matchmaking can ever be perfect. "I don't know if there's perfecting it," he said, as quoted by Dexerto. He said the studio studies player data to see how matchmaking affects different groups and that its goal is to build good matches. He didn't explain how the system works or say whether it will change.

Activision made its case for skill-based matchmaking back in August. Citing Black Ops 7 data, the official Call of Duty account on X said that for 80% of players, Open playlists had 32.7% higher quit rates and 59.2% more "Not Fun" ratings than Standard ones, according to Dexerto. Creators such as TheXclusiveAce pushed back, arguing the metrics miss what lobbies that stay together add. Infinity Ward's known-issues board also lists matchmaking quality and stability on all platforms, per Insider Gaming.

Patches so far and what's next

The only patch out is the launch update, with notes dated October 22 that answer beta feedback. Infinity Ward says it reworked spawns to keep players farther apart, adopted the faster time-to-kill from the second beta weekend, meaning opponents go down sooner, and moved Tactical Sprint, the faster run, into Blood Rush, one of the perks players pick for their loadout. The notes don't mention SBMM, and the official patch notes page showed nothing newer as of Saturday evening.

Shipment, the series' famously tiny map, arrives Tuesday, October 27. Infected and the new Possession mode are due for Halloween, ahead of a Season 1 that still has no date. DMZ, which opened October 20 for preorder buyers, has drawn the most praise in that early feedback, alongside the campaign. Here's how it works and who can play it.

How to remove the Modern Warfare 4 background on Xbox

Xbox owners have a different complaint. At launch, many consoles swapped their home screen background for Modern Warfare 4 art without asking. Pure Xbox traced it to a new setting for event-themed backgrounds that's switched on by default. To turn it off, open Settings, go to General, then Personalization, select My background and uncheck Show event-themed backgrounds. Neither Microsoft nor Activision has commented.