Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is returning to Steam, and pre-orders are already live

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Five years later, Call of Duty has returned to Steam

Call of Duty
(Image credit: Activision)

Modern Warfare 2 will be available on Steam, Activision has confirmed, and Call of Duty: MW2 pre-orders are live right now.

The Modern Warfare 2 Steam page is live right now, with pre-orders available for $69.99 / £59.99 / €69.99. If you want to spend more than that, you can opt for the Vault Edition, which offers the Red Team 141 operator pack, the Season 1 battle pass with 50 tier skips, four additional operators, and FJX Cinder, described as the "first-ever weapon vault."

Valve itself teased the return of Modern Warfare 2 to Steam in a tweet a week ago. Modern Warfare 2 will be the first Call of Duty released on Steam in five years. The last series entry on Valve's platform was Call of Duty: WWII, released in 2017.

Activision Blizzard had been keeping its PC releases mostly exclusive to its own Battle.net platform, though there were exceptions, like the remade Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games. Still, Call of Duty is one of the biggest game franchises in the world, and its return to Steam is a big deal.

This puts the Call of Duty maker in the company of EA and Xbox in supporting their own proprietary launchers while bringing some of their biggest games to Steam. It seems big publishers are not keen to give up the PC gaming market share that Steam can provide.

The trailer may have leaked before the official announcement, but there's plenty more to know - check out our Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer preview for loads of info on what to expect.

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Dustin Bailey
Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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