Star Wars Battlefront 2 has beaten its all-time Steam concurrent player numbers, five years after the game was released on the platform.
The game, which has seen a spike in popularity over the last week due to a social media campaign from fans attempting to revitalise interest in the series, saw 18,635 players on Steam on Monday, the highest number of concurrent players achieved on the platform since it was released.
When the game was first released in 2017, Star Wars Battlefront 2 was exclusive to Electronic Arts [1,755 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/companies/electronic-arts/”>EA‘s Origin platform. It was then later released on Steam [2,462 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/pc/steam/”>Steam in 2020.
While the original Origin release could have seen a higher initial concurrent player count, this week’s peak of 18,635 is by far the game’s highest Steam spike, far surpassing when the game was added to the platform.
Before this week, the highest the peak had ever reached on Steam was 10,489 back in January 2021, meaning the new record has nearly doubled that.
The game also re-appeared on the list of Steam’s 25 top-selling titles, suggesting that the social media campaign has recruited new players, as opposed to simply sparking a resurgence from existing ones.
EA ended support for the Star Wars shooter in 2020, after years of adding new heroes, maps, and modes to the game.
When Battlefront 2 was released in 2017, the game was met with intense backlash due to its microtransactions, which were seen as aggressive and exploitative by many. It was estimated at the time that it would take a player around 40 hours to earn enough free credits to unlock a single hero in the game. These locked heroes included iconic characters such as Darth Vader.
The backlash was so intense that EA reversed its initial microtransaction plan and removed them entirely. At the time, it was claimed that Disney privately scolded EA due to the public backlash, as the news of Battlefront 2’s microtransaction issues crossed over from the games press into mainstream news.
By the time support ended for Star Wars Battlefront 2, the community sentiment was positive, in stark contrast to the backlash the game faced at launch.
Following the viral resurgence in popularity for the game, a former Star Wars Battlefront 2 developer has said that he’d like to “get the band back together” for a potential new entry in the franchise.
Star Wars Battlefront and Star Wars Battlefront 2 were developed by EA DICE [279 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/companies/electronic-arts/ea-dice/”>Dice and published by EA during the publisher’s long-term exclusivity period, producing Star Wars video games.
While EA continues to develop Star Wars games [237 articles]” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/star-wars-games/”>Star Wars games, such as the ongoing Jedi series and the upcoming Star Wars Zero Company, the Battlefront series is currently dormant.
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