Call of Duty®: Black Ops III

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Very Positive · 89%Very Positive · 89%2015

The verdict

Black Ops III has arguably the best CoD Zombies, plus endless Workshop maps. On PC, unpatched RCE exploits, update breakage and full price hurt. Skip it if you want safe online play.

Great for

Zombies fans who want custom Workshop maps and co-op with friends, and will buy on sale and use a community patch

Main risk

Unpatched RCE exploits make online play unsafe without third-party patches, which official updates keep breaking

What players love

Best CoD Zombies experience

Mentioned in ~1 in 3 positive reviews

“the coooolest fricking zombies man. Der Eisendrache and Shadows are just such amazing maps”
Steam review · 37.8 h played ↗

“By far the greatest Multiplayer and Zombies modes in COD history.”
Steam review · 114.8 h played ↗

“The best zombies in the series, a classic survival mode like the first Black Ops games and WaW, with great graphics and detail”
Steam review · translated · 11 h played ↗

Endless Steam Workshop custom maps and mods

Mentioned in ~1 in 3 positive reviews

“Steam Workshop support completely changes the game.”
Steam review · 983.5 h played ↗

“The community has made thousands of them — some are better than official ones. It’s endless replayability, and that’s not an exaggeration.”
Steam review · 918.7 h played ↗

“plus there's a million pieces of content in the Workshop, you can easily play a thousand hours without noticing”
Steam review · translated · 28.9 h played ↗

Fun co-op with friends

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 positive reviews

“Very good game with lots to do, Specially fun with friends!”
Steam review · 17.1 h played ↗

“Playing the campaign with friends is especially chaotic and fun!”
Steam review · 10.6 h played ↗

Fluid movement and good multiplayer

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 positive reviews

“The movement system with wall-running and boost jumps makes multiplayer fast, fluid, and highly skill-based.”
Steam review · 4589.8 h played ↗

“Excellent multiplayer with nice maps that let you play however you like, and cool Specialists with different mechanics”
Steam review · translated · 59.5 h played ↗

Worth it on sale

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 positive reviews

“always pick it up on sale and get all the dlc for like $50 total”
Steam review · 149.5 h played ↗

“Very worth buying if it is on sale”
Steam review · 163.7 h played ↗

Zombies Chronicles and classic remastered maps

Mentioned in ~1 in 11 positive reviews

“The remakes of maps from BO1 and BO2 are simply fire.”
Steam review · translated · 263.5 h played ↗

“The only game that is arguably worth the price tag a decade later especially with the Chronicles edition.”
Steam review · 500.8 h played ↗

What players complain about

Unpatched RCE exploits and hackers

Mentioned in ~1 in 2 negative reviews

“people can install and run stuff on your rig and you have no idea + grab your IP address”
Steam review · 10.8 h played ↗

“It is unacceptable that this game has unpatched RCE exploits.”
Steam review · 1.6 h played ↗

“Get a custom client, the Steam version is literally worse than a virus.”
Steam review · 25.9 h played ↗

Full price for a decade-old game and paid DLC

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews

“11 years later and you still keep this game at the full price????”
Steam review · 32.6 h played ↗

“at 10+ years old it should not still be $60 with $30 dlc, it should be half the price.”
Steam review · 574.1 h played ↗

Won't launch, crashes and poor optimization

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews

“the game nowadays crashes randomly between rounds after the new updates”
Steam review · 22.2 h played ↗

“horribly unoptimized 5> fps on main menu”
Steam review · 10.2 h played ↗

“The game keeps opening in Safe Mode and then crashes.”
Steam review · translated · 0.8 h played ↗

Updates break community security patches

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“the developers decided to release a patch on February 19th, 2026 that breaks a lot of mods, several that actually make the game safe to play, and didn't even bother fixing any of the security issues.”
Steam review · 1008.4 h played ↗

“every few months or so they’ll “update” the game, not anything that fixes the rce exploit, only to condemn the game by making the t7 patch incompatible for the millionth time.”
Steam review · 31.9 h played ↗

Broken lobbies, NAT problems and dead multiplayer

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“Never able to connect and play zombies with friends cause the "Lobby Not Joinable" bug.”
Steam review · 111 h played ↗

“The NAT type is one of the most obnoxious things I have experienced in a multiplayer game”
Steam review · 270.8 h played ↗

“it says 50 available matches and immediately drops to 0”
Steam review · 0.6 h played ↗

Confusing, weak campaign

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 negative reviews

“the story in this game is probably the most incomprehensible piece of crap I have ever sat through”
Steam review · 12.4 h played ↗

“Terrible story. Calling it the ravings of a madman would be an understatement.”
Steam review · translated · 319.8 h played ↗

“The campaign is stuffed with too many enemies: an enemy at every corner and in every alley”
Steam review · translated · 16.3 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Playable

Minimum

OSWindows 7 64-Bit / Windows 8 64-Bit / Windows 8.1 64-Bit

ProcessorIntel® Core™ i3-530 @ 2.93 GHz / AMD Phenom™ II X4 810 @ 2.60 GHz

Memory6 GB RAM

GraphicsNVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 470 @ 1GB / ATI® Radeon™ HD 6970 @ 1GB

Storage100 GB available space

OSWindows 7 64-Bit / Windows 8 64-Bit / Windows 8.1 64-Bit

ProcessorIntel® Core™ i3-530 @ 2.93 GHz / AMD Phenom™ II X4 810 @ 2.60 GHz

Memory6 GB RAM

GraphicsNVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 470 @ 1GB / ATI® Radeon™ HD 6970 @ 1GB

Storage100 GB available space

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