Now that the Call of Duty Black Ops 6 launch weekend has passed and the dust has started to settle, it seems not everyone is enamored with the series' latest entry. In fact, a consistent crashing issue and disdain for the new CoD's multiplayer maps have smudged BO6's launch. Even if there's still a lot of fun to be had, the shooter's reputation on Steam has started to sour, as more players hit roadblocks stopping them from even playing.
While the Black Ops 6 Steam reviews were leaning on the positive at launch on Friday October 25, they've since gone down. As of writing the Black Ops 6 Steam reception is 'mixed,' with just 64% of the 3,361 reviews being positive. Crashes were a hot-button issue on day one, and that problem has persisted through the weekend. While it looks like most players are impressed with the content of the FPS game's campaign, it's the multiplayer where things start to fall apart.
Players are voicing frustration with Black Ops 6 map spawns, crashes across all three game modes, and problems when using the Call of Duty hub launcher. "Not a fan of the maps this time around," one player writes. "Just people running around the outskirts of the map and shooting spawning players in the back. Need bigger maps."
"Crashes on a high-end PC and continually disconnects from Steam servers," another writes. "Unplayable in its current state can't even play campaign." At PCGamesN, we've also faced problems when trying to load into multiplayer, whereby the game crashes between the lobby and the beginning of the match itself. Players are also reporting crashes in the campaign mode, and add that some of the Black Ops 6 missions aren't loading properly.
It's not just crashes and multiplayer spawns though, as players are voicing disdain with the Call of Duty HQ. This hub holds all your downloads for modern CoD games since 2022, including Warzone. The problem is, many find it cumbersome to navigate, with loading times hindering their ability to play the actual games.
"Please just put the different Call of Duty games in their own separate installs," a player writes of the CoD HQ. "I do not want to navigate through a launcher of games I don't want to play just to start up BO6."
You can also get an idea of Black Ops 6's mixed reception via the main Call of Duty Steam page. Keep in mind that throughout its lifetime (from October 2022), this page has aggregated player reviews for Modern Warfare 2, MW3, and CoD Warzone. So it's not just Black Ops 6 reviews on the main CoD Steam page. That said, on BO6's launch day 765 reviews were positive and 574 negative. This split trend has continued over the last few days, with overall review numbers dropping off.
Amid all that, the first major set of Black Ops 6 patch notes has dropped. Overall multiplayer stability and out-of-bounds glitches on some maps have been fixed, while a handful of game modes now reward an appropriate amount of XP and weapon XP.
If you can manage to avoid all the issues make sure you're up to date with the best Black Ops 6 loadouts, and know exactly what the Black Ops 6 Prestige system means for you once you reach max level.
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