Battlefield 6 Breaks Franchise Record on Steam
▼ Summary
– Battlefield 6 became the biggest Battlefield game on Steam with 747,440 concurrent players within 24 hours of its release.
– The game is also available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, but player numbers for those platforms are currently unknown.
– EA began reintroducing its games to Steam in 2020, making it impossible to compare Steam launch numbers of earlier Battlefield titles like Battlefield 1 and 5.
– Battlefield 6’s Open Beta previously set a series record on Steam with 521,079 peak concurrent players during its first weekend.
– A private-equity consortium including Saudi Arabia’s PIF and Jared Kushner’s firm announced a leveraged buyout of Electronic Arts, causing industry shockwaves.
Battlefield 6 has shattered franchise records on Steam, attracting over 700,000 concurrent players within its first day of availability. This remarkable achievement makes it the most successful Battlefield title ever launched on the platform. According to data from SteamDB’s Most Played Games chart, the game reached an impressive peak of 747,440 simultaneous players, securing its position as the fourteenth most-played game in Steam’s entire history.
The game is also accessible on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles, though specific player counts for those platforms remain undisclosed. Electronic Arts started bringing its catalog, which includes the Battlefield franchise, back to Valve’s digital storefront in 2020. Because EA had temporarily withdrawn its games from Steam previously, direct comparisons with earlier popular installments like Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 are not possible for their initial Steam launch figures. However, we can compare these new numbers to the concurrent player count of 2021’s Battlefield 2042.
This record-breaking launch follows closely on the heels of the Battlefield 6 Open Beta, which itself set a new standard for the series on Steam. During its inaugural weekend, the beta attracted a peak of 521,079 concurrent players, making it the most played Battlefield game on the platform at that time.
In unrelated but significant news, the video game industry was recently shaken by the announcement of a leveraged buyout for Electronic Arts. A private-equity consortium, which includes Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Silver Lake, and the independent investment firm Affinity Partners, is behind this move. Affinity Partners is led by Jared Kushner, who is the son-in-law of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
(Source: Games Industry)
