Rather than gaining more fans over time Battlefield 2042 is rapidly losing players, with over twice as many now playing Battlefield 5.
EA clearly had high hopes for Battlefield 2042 prior to release, with Call Of Duty: Vanguard already set to be a disappointment and early buzz around the new Battlefield being largely positive.
The beta was the first thing to start alarm bells ringing, before the launch turned into a disaster depressingly similar to that of Battlefield 4. But while that game did eventually right itself, it’s beginning to seem like Battlefield 2042 will never get the chance.
According to the latest SteamDB charts the most recent figures for Battlefield 2042, from January 6, put the number of players at just 13,574. That’s compared to 24,884 for Battlefield 5 and 9,523 for Battlefield 1.
At time of writing (when most of North America is asleep) the figures are even worse, with just 6,496 playing Battlefield 2042, but 6,750 on Battlefield 1 and 17,841 on Battlefield 5.
Obviously, the older games have had much longer to create a larger userbase, but both were controversial entries in the series and the original hope for Battlefield 2042 was that it would address the failings of its immediate predecessor, Battlefield 5.
The only positive in the statistics is that Battlefield 2042 has a higher all-time peak, of 105,397 players, compared to 89,814 for Battlefield 5.
There’s also plenty of places for PC gamers to play the game other than Steam, not to mention these stats don’t cover the console versions at all.
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As EA and developer DICE clearly already know, the only answer to the game’s current problems is to keep plugging away with new updates and improvements, which they’ve already started to do.
The game’s reputation could hardly be lower at the moment though and the idea that it’s being played less than the six-year-old Battlefield 1 would’ve seemed ridiculous just a few months ago.
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