As Battlefield 2042 prepares to celebrate its first anniversary, the franchise’s latest installment is still struggling to mobilize crowds. The proof is, the attendance on Steam of the previous opuses explode, in particular that of Battlefield 1.
In 2021, gamers were eagerly awaiting the return of a cult FPS franchise, namely Battlefield. Indeed, the developers of Dice returned to the battlefield with Battlefield 2042, a promising episode taking place in an alternate future.
Unfortunately, the Swedish studio missed the boat and the launch of the title in November 2021 was marked by many controversies. First of all, the game was riddled with bugs, making the experience particularly unpleasant, between recurring connection problems with the servers, erratic aiming on PC, not to mention a balance that had to be completely reviewed (overpowered vehicles and well-designed weapons stronger than others).
The game quickly took the prize for the most hated title on Steam, and a petition to obtain a refund for the game even exceeded 100,000 signatories in February 2022, only a few months after the launch. In December 2021, the exodus of players was already massive, and tens of thousands of them preferred to jump ship and return to old episodes of the franchise like Battlefield V.
Battlefield 2042 still remains less popular than the franchise’s older games
And precisely, the successive updates, the arrival of the first two multiplayer seasons and new game modes were not enough to raise the bar. According to SteamDB, Battlefield 2042 has never managed to surpass 15,000 connected players since January 2022 and now fluctuates between 5,000 and 8,000 active players.
In October 2022, the deployment of Update 2.2 did not mobilize the crowds more. On the contrary, the weekend of October 27, Dice’s latest title was blown up by an old license game: Battlefield 1. While there were only 5935 players on BF 2042, they were nearly 52,000 on the opus taking place during the First World War.
At present, the trend remains the same, with 32,776 players on Battlefield 1 and only 3,183 active players on Battlefield 2042. Be aware that things are unlikely to change in the near future, since Dice has already redirected its workforce to upcoming games. “Concretely, BF 2042 is in the hands of a reduced team. It has been stripped down to the bare essentials and these folks are only working on the promised additional seasons the game needs to meet the high-end requirements that have been sold.” explained journalist Jeff Grubb in June 2022.
