CoD Black Ops 6 Steam reviews slam audio DLC, frequent crashes, and texture streaming

CoD Black Ops 6 on Steam is off to a rough start, with players slamming the FPS game over bugs and crashes and some rather odd choices on Activision’s part

Activision

CoD Black Ops 6 on Steam is off to a rough start, with players slamming the FPS game over bugs and crashes and some rather odd choices on Activision’s part. Black Ops 6 is currently sitting at “mixed” status, with over 2,000 reviews logged since the game launched on October 25, 2024. Fewer than half of those reviews are negative, but they share similar complaints.

One of the most frequent problems players are running into is that Black Ops 6 frequently just doesn’t work on Steam – assuming it launches at all. The most common issue folks are running into is with the notoriously buggy and obnoxious CoD launcher, which Steam redirects you to after you try to launch it on Valve’s platform. The launcher is reportedly forcing players to restart multiple times to update Black Ops 6, and if they want to swap between campaign and multiplayer mode, they have to exit the game, open the launcher again, pick their desired mode, close the launcher, and then run the game.

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“Activision…do you think that this is a good experience for the player?” one reviewer wrote. “Remove Call Of Duty HQ.”

Others never even get to that point, as the launcher refuses to start the game or keeps forcing them to reboot the launcher for updates. When it does start running, Black Ops 6’s bugs and crashes often kick players out multiple times.

“I've had 4 game-breaking bugs within the last 6 hours of play,” another user wrote. “It's wild that this is acceptable.”

Others took issue with how Activision handled high-quality audio for Black Ops 6. If you want the best sound experience, you have to pay extra for a license to use Emobody’s Advanced Headphone mode, which improves Black Ops 6’s audio with a personalized EQ balance. You still get high-quality audio if you sign up for a free profile with Embody, but the idea of having to pay extra for better sound hasn’t gone over well.

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A small handful of reviewers also complained about texture streaming, technology that prevents you from having to download and store high-quality asset packs on your system, harming their performance in multiplayer mode. It doesn’t actually affect performance – bugs might be responsible for that, or your own system settings – though players want the option to just download the textures anyway. Currently, you have to use texture streaming. 

Activision will, presumably, address the bugs and crashes in the coming weeks, but if you’re planning to play on Steam, you might want to hold off for a few days until hotfixes go out.