Call of Duty is selling big on PC this year. In its third-quarter earnings report released today, Activision said that sales of Modern Warfare 2 (opens in new tab) were "nearly double those of recent strong series titles." This is an oddly unspecific qualifier, but it contributes to "Call of Duty" becoming the fastest ever to reach $1 billion in sales.

"What's changed on PC this year?" While some of the increase can certainly be attributed to the Modern Warfare series craze, the real culprit is Steam.

Modern Warfare 2 is the first Call of Duty to launch on Steam in five years; starting with 2018's Black Ops 4, the last four Call of Duty games (including Warzone) only existed on the PC Battle.net client. There were none. Thankfully, Modern Warfare 2 is also not a "launch another launcher" kind of deal; just click play on Steam and you're in the game immediately.

Activision has once again decided to share the wealth with Valve, and it seems to be paying off; Modern Warfare 2 has remained at the top of Steam's top sellers list since its launch, and has consistently topped Steam's most played list . This is not the total number of people logged into the game, just the number of concurrent users at peak times.

Perhaps more impressive numbers are the hours played for Modern Warfare 2, which, according to Activision, "set a new franchise record for a Call of Duty premium release, with the first 10 days of play time exceeding the franchise record by over 40%. . and exceeded the franchise record by more than 40%."

This is a lot of team deathmatch. There are many possible reasons for the longer play time, but I know why I've been able to play longer than before: the progression system in Modern Warfare 2 is more engaging, but often infuriating. It's nice to be forced to use a wide variety of guns to unlock everything you want, but that confusing menu sure makes it hard to know what you're following.