I was doom-scrolling through a Battlefield 6 thread when a guy popped up in my replies with that tone.
I’d said, “There are only so many people in the world who actively enjoy video games. It’s the same half a million people bouncing between titles.”
He came back with:
“You do realize there are 8.2 billion people in the world, right?”
Join The Discussion on Facebook
And that’s when I realized: some of you are out here playing FPS games on Ultra Rage with the math settings stuck on Potato.
So let’s walk through this like adults who have met both a calculator and a loading screen.
https://m.facebook.com/groups/1374957446166169/permalink/4213934068935145/?mibextid=wwXIfr
1. The thing he doesn’t understand: addressable audience
He hit me with “there are 8.2 billion people!!” like that number has anything to do with who’s actually in the Battlefield / CoD pool.
Step 1 – Humans on Earth
Best current estimates put the world population at about 8.2 billion people in 2024–2025.
Cool. That’s literally all humans – babies, elders, people without electricity, people who’ve never seen a controller in their life.
Step 2 – People who can even be online
At the start of 2025, roughly five and a half billion people use the internet, around two-thirds of humanity. That still leaves around 2.6 billion people offline.
So right away:
8.2B humans → ~5.6B with internet → 2.6B people who literally cannot queue into a Battlefield or CoD lobby.
His “everyone on Earth” logic dies before you even open Steam.
2. How many people actually play video games in 2025?
Industry reports converge on about 3.3 billion active gamers worldwide in 2024–2025 – roughly 40% of the human race.
So:
~8.2B humans ~5.6B internet users ~3.3B people who play any kind of game, including: Mobile match-3 Word games Sports, racing, farming, gacha, rhythm, cozy games, etc.
Already, more than half of humanity is out. My original point – that the “hardcore FPS bros” are a tiny minority – is directionally correct.
3. Zooming in: shooters ≠ “all gamers”
The global games market pulled in somewhere around $180+ billion in 2024, with mobile as the biggest slice and PC/console sharing the rest.
Within that:
Shooter games are one genre, not the whole pie. On PC, shooters account for something like low-teens percent of PC gaming revenue – a top segment, but still just a segment. Separate analyses peg the global shooter-games market in the tens of billions per year—substantial, but still only a subset of all games.
Even if we’re extremely generous and pretend shooter revenue maps cleanly to shooter players (it doesn’t), we’re still talking about a fraction of that ~3.3B gamer pool.
A reasonable back-of-the-napkin:
If ~14–20% of gamer spending goes to shooters, then maybe something like 10–20% of gamers are “shooter regulars” (because people play multiple genres). That would be on the order of 300–600 million people maximum in the global “likes FPS” bucket.
Compare that to his “8.2 billion” flex. He’s off by at least one order of magnitude, probably two.
4. Battlefield 6 / CoD numbers in context
Now the fun part: the actual scale of these games compared to the planet.
Battlefield 6
Recent coverage of Battlefield 6’s launch puts:
The open beta peak on Steam somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of concurrent players (around the half-million mark). The official launch peak on Steam at around three-quarters of a million concurrents, one of EA’s biggest PC launches ever.
Now set that next to 3.3 billion gamers worldwide:
Those big Steam peaks represent on the order of 0.01–0.02% of all gamers at one time.
As a share of all humans (8.2B), you’re talking about less than one hundredth of one percent of the species.
My “same half a million people bouncing between games” description is not just snark – it’s eerily close to how these launches actually look in the wild.
Call of Duty for comparison
Call of Duty lives across Battle.net, consoles, Game Pass, Steam, etc., but PC tracking frequently shows concurrent counts in the mid-hundreds of thousands on big days—same ballpark as Battlefield 6’s biggest moments.
So in practice:
We’re talking about the same rough few-hundred-thousand to low-millions of very engaged FPS people cycling through CoD, Battlefield, and whatever else launches that quarter, plus tourists and weekend warriors.
On a planet of 8.2B humans and 3.3B gamers… that shooter pond is tiny.
5. Why his argument is statistically trash
Here’s the logic problem in meme-friendly form.
1. He’s using the wrong denominator.
He quotes the entire human population (8.2B) like every person:
Owns gaming hardware Has stable internet Has disposable income for $70 AAA titles Actually wants to play online FPS games
That’s like saying, “There are 8.2B humans, therefore every band can sell 8.2B concert tickets.” The number is big; the logic is small.
2. He ignores the digital divide.
Roughly 2.6 billion people remain offline.
Those folks are not on Reddit arguing about Battlefield vs. CoD. They’re dealing with real-world things like infrastructure, food, water, and basic connectivity. Treating them as hypothetical Battlefield players is both disrespectful and mathematically absurd.
3. He conflates “plays any game” with “plays online FPS.”
We’ve already seen:
About 3.3B people play games at all. Mobile is the dominant platform worldwide. Shooters are one large but limited genre, not the whole medium, and they’re a minority slice of revenue.
Treating “people who raid in MMOs, farm in Stardew, or play Genshin on their phone” as the same as “people grinding ranked in Battlefield” is just lazy categorization.
4. He ignores how small even massive games look at planetary scale.
Battlefield 6 smashing hundreds of thousands of concurrent players on Steam is a huge win for EA and for the franchise. Nobody’s denying that.
But zoom out:
It’s a rounding error of humanity. It’s a tiny fraction of the global gamer base.
It’s a very loud, very passionate micro-subculture—not the entire human experience.
In other words:
He’s not “doing statistics.”
He’s doing numerology with big numbers because they look impressive in a comment box.
6. What I could of should have would have replied if I was super smart.
You’re confusing “all humans alive” with “people who are actually in the Battlefield/CoD pond,” which is exactly why I told you to take a stats class.
Quick reality check:
– The world has ~8.2 billion people.
– Only about 5.6 billion even use the internet; around 2.6 billion people are offline.
– Of those online, about 3.3 billion play any kind of video game – including mobile puzzle games and Candy Crush.
– The shooter genre is just one slice of that market, maybe a low-teens percentage of PC revenue and a fraction of overall game spending.
When Battlefield 6 blew up, Steam peaks were in the mid-hundreds of thousands to around three-quarters of a million concurrent players. Relative to the ~3.3B gamers on Earth, that’s roughly 0.01–0.02% of global players online at once – and less than 0.01% of total humans.
So yes: in practice, we’re talking about the same tiny hardcore shooter crowd of a few hundred thousand to maybe low-millions bouncing between CoD, Battlefield, and whatever else drops this quarter. Calling that “the same half-million people” is actually closer to reality than pretending all 8.2 billion humans are lining up to argue about TTK in a Battlefield 6 Facebook Page.
If you want to argue about scale, use the right denominator. Otherwise you’re just doing numerology with big numbers because they look impressive.
Closing thoughts from The ((Mercy Main btw;) eGirl with a calculator
Video games are huge.
The industry is massive.
But scale has structure:
World population People with internet People who game People who play shooters People who are active in this specific FPS right now
Once you respect that ladder, it becomes obvious that our beloved shooter communities are more like small towns than entire countries.
So the next time someone waves the full human population in your face to “win” an argument about Battlefield vs. CoD, feel free to remind them:
“Normie, there might be 8.2 billion people on Earth, but only about half a million of us are in this lobby getting spawn-camped with you.”
With All My Love
Jade Ann Byrne (( Seasons 1 Battle mercy, Father to Juno, and all the best operators in call of duty black ops six ;))
Post Script
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