Over the weekend, proper when Name of Responsibility was having an enormous second with the Fashionable Warfare 3 beta, EA and DICE had some little bit of counter-programming deliberate, which nobody might’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 definitely daring, and it paid off.
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 keeping with SteamDB, which is simply shy of the 105,397 peak concurrent it had at launch in November, 2021.
Coincidentally, Name of Responsibility obtained a lift to its personal numbers due to the Fashionable Warfare 3 beta, peaking at 161,126 concurrent gamers. Whereas that’s definitely greater than Battlefield, it’s price protecting in thoughts that Name of Responsibility is usually considerably extra in style, 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. However it’s right here now, with a brand new infantry-only map harking back to Operation Locker. The brand new season additionally added new weapons, modified car handing, rebalanced courses (that are additionally a current addition), and made a number of tweaks to aiming – particularly on controllers.
You could possibly simply see how the quiet, however regular optimistic buzz popping out of the Battlefield group over the past 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 enjoying at no cost. Gamers unmoved by the tasteless Fashionable Warfare 3 beta could 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 arduous to foretell whether or not all that work goes to have a long-lasting impact on the participant base of Battlefield 2042. As we close to the top of the free weekend, the sport’s concurrent participant depend has already dropped, and can possible 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 might result in a resurgence of kinds that pushes the sport increased 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 a number of the current patches and map reworks. Battlefield 2042 is undoubtedly a significantly better sport right this moment than it ever was, however a part of me nonetheless can’t recover from a number of the main basic modifications that made it into the sport to start with, which, whereas much less impactful right this moment than in 2021, are nonetheless current and arduous to disregard.
We’ll be keeping track of how issues develop for Battlefield 2042 within the coming weeks, particularly as we close to the launch of Fashionable Warfare 3.