Over the weekend, proper when Name of Responsibility was having a giant second with the Fashionable Warfare 3 beta, EA and DICE had some little bit of counter-programming deliberate, which nobody may’ve predicted would find yourself really serving to Battlefield.
In celebration of the launch of Season 6 – prone to be Battlefield 2024’s final main replace – the sport held a free weekend on all platforms, and went on sale at a steep 84% off low cost. Scheduling all that to go up towards Battlefield’s juggernaut competitor was actually daring, and it paid off.
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Battlefield 2042, which has been averaging a modest of 10,000 concurrent gamers per day on Steam, tends to ask much more curiosity from gamers every time new content material is launched. Although we’ve seen these numbers attain the 40 and 50,000 with previous seasons and free weekends, nothing has fairly made a dent as the latest replace and free weekend.
Over the weekend, Battlefield 2042 peaked at a staggering 104,060 concurrent gamers on Steam alone, in line with SteamDB, which is simply shy of the 105,397 peak concurrent it had at launch in November, 2021.
Coincidentally, Name of Responsibility acquired a lift to its personal numbers due to the Fashionable Warfare 3 beta, peaking at 161,126 concurrent gamers. Whereas that’s actually greater than Battlefield, it’s value protecting in thoughts that Name of Responsibility is often considerably extra standard, with its peak nearing half-a-million concurrent gamers.
The timing for that promotion couldn’t have been higher. Battlefield simply acquired the large 6.0.0 patch to kick off Season 6, a season gamers didn’t even assume would occur. Nevertheless it’s right here now, with a brand new infantry-only map paying homage to Operation Locker. The brand new season additionally added new weapons, modified car handing, rebalanced courses (that are additionally a latest addition), and made a number of tweaks to aiming – particularly on controllers.
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You might simply see how the quiet, however regular optimistic buzz popping out of the Battlefield neighborhood during the last a number of months has lastly satisfied curious gamers to take a look at the sport, particularly now that there was a chance to start out taking part in totally free. Gamers unmoved by the tasteless Fashionable Warfare 3 beta might have additionally determined to provide Battlefield 2042 an opportunity, notably in the event that they performed the sport at launch and by no means returned.
It’s laborious to foretell whether or not all that work goes to have an enduring impact on the participant base of Battlefield 2042. As we close to the top of the free weekend, the sport’s concurrent participant rely has already dropped, and can probably proceed to slip additional till it settles over the approaching days. The actual win right here can be for the sport to persuade gamers to stay round, which may result in a resurgence of types that pushes the sport greater up the Steam charts.
As a longtime Battlefield fan who deserted 2042 pretty shortly after its disastrous launch, I dipped my toes again in right here and there to take a look at among the latest patches and map reworks. Battlefield 2042 is undoubtedly a a lot better recreation at the moment than it ever was, however a part of me nonetheless can’t recover from among the main basic adjustments that made it into the sport to start with, which, whereas much less impactful at the moment than in 2021, are nonetheless current and laborious to disregard.
We’ll be maintaining a tally of how issues develop for Battlefield 2042 within the coming weeks, particularly as we close to the launch of Fashionable Warfare 3.
