Modern Warfare 4 has the best Call of Duty rating on Steam in a decade, but only its campaign is out

As of 4:22 a.m. ET (10:22 a.m. CEST) on Monday, October 19, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 had 92.4% positive user reviews on Steam: 3,384 of the 3,663 reviews counted on its store page, enough for a Very Positive label. No Call of Duty released after 2009's Modern Warfare 2 currently rates that high on Steam. Black Ops III, the best-reviewed entry of the past decade, sits at 88.6%.

The game is only partly out, though. Since October 16, digital preorder buyers have had early access to the campaign. DMZ follows on October 20, and multiplayer arrives with the full launch on October 23. For now, the score reflects the campaign and the series' most eager buyers.

How Steam scores a game

A Steam review is a thumbs-up or thumbs-down plus written comments. Steam divides positive reviews by the total and maps the share to a label, from Overwhelmingly Positive down through Mixed to Mostly Negative. Store pages show a score for the past 30 days and one for the game's lifetime, and for Modern Warfare 4 the two are still identical.

Not every review counts. Valve's developer documentation says only players who bought the game on Steam and played it affect the score. Someone who redeems a key bought elsewhere can post a review, but it doesn't move the percentage. Valve also says reviews written during an advance-access period are displayed as if the game were fully released. So the 92.4% comes from PC players on Steam. Anyone playing on PS5, Xbox, Switch 2 or Battle.net is outside that count.

Where earlier entries stand

Checked on the same basis that morning at 4:05 a.m. ET, Black Ops III holds 88.6% across 158,601 reviews. Black Ops Cold War (2020) is at 79.4% and Modern Warfare (2019) at 79.1%. The four entries before Modern Warfare 4 are all under half: Modern Warfare III (2023) at 48.1%, Modern Warfare II (2022) at 45.9%, Black Ops 6 (2024) at 44.9% and Black Ops 7 (2025) at 37.5%, the only one rated Mostly Negative. Only Call of Duty 4 (2007) and Modern Warfare 2 (2009) rank above Modern Warfare 4, both at 93.5%.

Insider Gaming, which first reported the milestone, gives lower numbers: 87.4% for Modern Warfare 4 and 84.36% for Black Ops III. Those match the SteamDB rating, an independent site's formula that pulls scores with few reviews toward 50% so a small sample can't inflate them. Under either method, Modern Warfare 4 currently beats Black Ops III.

Who has been able to review it

Reviewing Modern Warfare 4 this week requires a digital preorder. On Steam, the standard edition costs $69.99 and the Vault Edition $99.99. Everyone posting a review has paid full price to start a week early, which makes them keener on the game than the average buyer. Insider Gaming flags the same bias.

The sample is also small and new. Black Ops III built up its 158,601 reviews over eleven years of multiplayer, updates and sales. Modern Warfare 4's 3,663 arrived in three days and cover one mode, a 16-mission campaign set across Korea, Paris, New York and Mumbai, according to Activision.

Multiplayer arrives October 23

The full game and multiplayer open on October 23, when players who buy at launch without a preorder can start reviewing too. That's when a fair comparison with earlier entries begins, since their scores reflect years of online matches. The August beta let people try multiplayer, but beta play couldn't be reviewed on the Steam store page.

The 92.4% is genuine, and it shows that early buyers like the campaign. It can't yet show whether that goodwill survives multiplayer and a wider audience. Steam's separate 30-day score will be the first place a shift shows up after October 23.