Modern Warfare 4's Steam Reviews Fell From 95% to 54% in Eight Days. What Players Hate, and What PC Players Can Actually Fix

The campaign landed. The multiplayer did not, at least not on Steam.

We pulled Modern Warfare 4's daily review history straight from Steam (its own store app, English-language reviews, by day). During campaign early access, from October 17 to 20, players recommended the game 91 to 95% of the time. Multiplayer went live with the full launch on October 23. That day the positive share fell to 64%. By October 26 and 27 it was 55% and 54%.

Date (UTC)	Positive	Negative	% positive
Oct 17	1,193	111	91%
Oct 18	1,219	74	94%
Oct 19	908	49	95%
Oct 20	705	72	91%
Oct 21	497	75	87%
Oct 22	494	154	76%
Oct 23 (full launch)	708	406	64%
Oct 24	700	439	61%
Oct 25	412	303	58%
Oct 26	282	230	55%
Oct 27	210	181	54%

Steam review histogram for Modern Warfare 4 (app 4435490), English reviews, pulled October 28. Free to cite with a link.

Across the four early-access days, 93% of reviews were positive. Across the first five days of full launch, 60% were. The overall score still reads well because the early-access glow is baked into it, but the trend line is the story, and it has not turned yet. Korean outlet Gamemeca saw the same thing across all languages on October 26: recent reviews "Mixed" at 58%, even as concurrent players passed 227,000.

None of this means the game runs badly. The first benchmarks were good, and critics have been far kinder than Steam, with the campaign singled out for praise. What people are angry about is how multiplayer plays. Some of that you can change from your PC. Most of it you cannot.

What players are angry about

Skill-based matchmaking. The biggest single complaint. Black Ops 7 experimented with "Open" matchmaking that weighs skill less; Modern Warfare 4 went back to "Classic," which weighs it more. Players describe every lobby as a tournament final, and one viral post called it "the most miserable experience to date." Infinity Ward's multiplayer creative director, Joe Cecot, told IGN "I don't know if there's perfecting it" and "our end goal is that every match is a good match," and the studio pointed to data showing Classic beat Open on retention, queue times and quit rates. It did not say how the system works or whether it will change.

No crossplay toggle on PC. Console players can set crossplay to Console Only, which keeps PC players out of their lobbies. PC players have no matching switch, so there is no way to avoid controller players and their aim assist. It is one-sided by design, and Gamemeca lists it among the main complaints in the Steam reviews, which are written by PC players by definition.

Time to kill and the camping meta. Players say gunfights take longer than in previous Modern Warfare games, and that the slower kill time rewards holding an angle with a sniper or shotgun over moving.

Hit registration and servers. Shots that should land and do not. This is the hardest complaint to pin down, because it overlaps with packet loss on the player's own connection, but it is common enough in the reviews that Gamemeca listed it first.

DMZ economy. Operator recovery costs and camped extraction points are the DMZ complaints, along with requests for a separate PvE mode.

Infinity Ward's patches so far, including the October 25 update, have fixed spawns, exploits and crashes, not any of the above. The realistic date for bigger changes is Season 1 on November 6, when Warzone also moves to Modern Warfare 4 content. Season launches are when Call of Duty usually makes its large multiplayer changes. Nobody has promised any for this one.

What you can actually fix on a PC

1. The driver

Both GPU makers shipped a launch driver for this game, and both had problems.

• NVIDIA: 621.01 was the Game Ready driver, with Advanced Shader Delivery so the game downloads precompiled shaders instead of building them on your PC. It also blanked monitors for some RTX 50 owners. Hotfix 621.12 (October 27) fixes that and keeps the shader delivery. Our 621.01 post has the details, including the rollback for RTX 40 owners.
• AMD: Adrenalin 26.10.1 (October 20) adds Modern Warfare 4 optimizations and fixes stutter in the game on RX 6000 and newer. Its known issues are in other games, listed in our 26.10.1 post.

2. Video memory on 8GB cards

This is the setting that matters most on mid-range cards. ComputerBase found 8GB of video memory "not sufficient" for maximum detail at 1440p and above, while 12GB was enough everywhere. In their test the 8GB cards (RTX 3060 Ti, 4060, 5060, RX 7600) all landed between 50 and 63 fps at 1440p Extreme with Quality upscaling.

• Drop texture quality one step below the top. It costs almost nothing in frame rate when it fits in memory, and costs a lot in stutter when it does not.
• Recent Call of Duty games have a VRAM scale target slider that caps how much video memory the game claims. Settings guides for this one recommend roughly 70 to 80% on 8GB cards so Windows, the browser and your overlays keep some headroom. Check the in-game memory readout after changing it.
• Use upscaling on Quality (DLSS 4, FSR 4.1 or XeSS). That is how ComputerBase tested every card.

Not sure your card is the limit? The MW4 page on our FPS calculator estimates frame rates for your CPU and GPU combination, and our bottleneck calculator shows which part is holding you back.

3. Ray tracing and DLSS

At launch, turning on the ray-tracing denoiser switches off DLSS, and FSR and XeSS are locked the same way. The developers say this is intentional for now. RT is also expensive: in ComputerBase's 4K test, RT High took the RTX 5070 Ti from 104 fps to 57. For multiplayer, leave ray tracing off. It is a campaign setting.

4. Mouse feel

If aiming feels choppy only in some games, make sure Windows has the October 13 update, KB5127648, which Microsoft says "fixes an issue that could cause mouse input to stutter in some games." Our mouse stutter post has the checks if it survives the update, including dropping an 8000Hz mouse to 1000Hz.

5. Hit registration you can rule out

You cannot fix Infinity Ward's servers, but you can rule out your own connection before blaming them. Call of Duty's interface settings have long included a telemetry overlay that shows latency and packet loss; turn it on and watch the packet loss figure during a match. Anything above zero that comes and goes points at your network: switch from Wi-Fi to a cable if you can, and close anything uploading in the background. If packet loss reads zero and shots still vanish, it is the game, and your review is fair.

6. Playlists, if SBMM is wearing you down

YouTuber TheXclusiveAce reported that some playlists under the "Popular" tab seem to use more forgiving matchmaking and persistent lobbies than Quick Play, and suggested Search and Destroy or Team Deathmatch for a less punishing feel. Infinity Ward has not confirmed this, so treat it as a tip to try, not a fact.

7. Aim assist

There is no setting that removes controller players from your lobbies on PC. If it bothers you enough, the other answer is the one many PC players quietly take: play on a controller yourself, since aim assist applies to any controller, on any platform. Our best PC controller guide covers the ones worth buying.

What you cannot fix

Matchmaking, time to kill, the crossplay toggle and the servers are Infinity Ward's to change, and the reviews are the loudest way players have of telling them. If you have played enough to have an opinion, leaving one is not pointless: the daily numbers above are exactly what the studio is watching too.

We will re-pull the review history after Season 1 starts on November 6 and add it here.

The short version

• Steam reviews: 91 to 95% positive per day during campaign early access, 64% on launch day, about 54% by October 27 (English reviews, Steam's own history).
• Complaints: Classic SBMM, no crossplay toggle on PC, slower time to kill and camping, hit registration, the DMZ economy. The campaign is not the problem.
• Infinity Ward: defends Classic matchmaking with retention data; patches so far fix spawns and exploits. Season 1 and the Warzone integration land November 6.
• Fix on PC: NVIDIA hotfix 621.12 or AMD 26.10.1; textures one step down on 8GB cards with a VRAM target around 70 to 80%; upscaling on Quality; ray tracing off for multiplayer; Windows update KB5127648; check packet loss before blaming hit reg.

Related reading

• Modern Warfare 4 PC requirements and launch benchmarks, including TPM and Secure Boot
• GeForce 621.01 black screens and the 621.12 hotfix
• AMD Adrenalin 26.10.1 known issues
• MW4 FPS estimates for your hardware