We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

Modern Warfare 2 Steam art sparks hope for Call of Duty return

Could there be a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Steam release this year? Some MW2 art is sparking hopes for a Call of Duty Steam franchise return

Could there be a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Steam release?

Artwork for the new Call of Duty game has popped up on Valve’s storefront, sparking hope amongst fans that a Modern Warfare 2 Steam release is on the cards – which would mark the return of the FPS game franchise to the platform after five years.

The last Call of Duty game on Steam was WWII back in 2017, and from Black Ops IV onwards the series has been exclusive to Activision Blizzard’s own Battle.net service on PC – including the ongoing Warzone. It was expected that the recently-revealed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 would follow suit, but it’s possible that might not be the case.

As spotted by fans, the Steam page for certain Call of Duty games – like the DLC list for Black Ops III – features a “Call of Duty franchise” button. Up until the time of writing, that link showed the main cover art from Modern Warfare 2. The artwork disappeared while I was writing this, but you can still check it out on the original Reddit post.

While by no means a guarantee that Call of Duty could return to Steam, this is what fans are hoping – even if it’s just for sale on Steam and players still need Battle.net to run it, similar to Ubisoft games. Given that Microsoft plans to buy Activision Blizzard and that Microsoft has a good relationship with Steam, it seems like a return of Call of Duty to Valve’s storefront is likely – although whether it will happen with this year’s Modern Warfare 2 is another matter.

MWII artwork shows up on Steam from ModernWarfareII

Hopefully, Modern Warfare 2 will show up on Steam, because the series may otherwise skip next year if reports are accurate.