It's been four years since we've had a big Battlefield release on our hands (and the last one didn't exactly pan out very well, to say the least), but that's changed today with the explosive launch of Battlefield 6 across Xbox, PC, and PS5. Going in, Electronic Arts' (EA) new FPS was expected to skyrocket to the top of player charts and become one of 2025's biggest games — and so far, it's living up to that expectation and then some.
Just hours after the game's arrival on Friday morning, Battlefield 6 soared to a peak concurrent player count of 747,440 on Steam alone, according to SteamDB data; that's just shy of a whopping 750K milestone, and it makes the shooter the 14th most-played game of all time on Steam, just behind Baldur's Gate 3 and ahead of Goose Goose Duck.
At the time of writing, it's slipped down to around ~600K concurrent players, but that number is expected to climb higher as the weekend starts and more fans can deploy to the battlefield once they're off work.
In fact, many are anticipating Battlefield 6 will shoot past the 1 million mark — a feat that would put it above FromSoftware's GOTY-winning 2022 ARPG Elden Ring and place it in the top 10 most-played Steam games list. That would be an incredible achievement, and quite symbolic of Battlefield's comeback as a series.
In response to the FPS' launch day success, Vince Zampella — head of Respawn Entertainment, Ripple Effect Studios, and the Battlefield franchise itself — took to social media to respond, thanking Battlefield 6's developers for their hard work as well as the Battlefield community for its continued and honest feedback.
"I need to take a moment to say congrats the incredible teams that brought BF6 to life. What an incredible journey we’ve been on the last few years," he wrote. "They poured themselves into this game. So amazing to show all their hard work. And they are just getting started, more to come."
"I also need to thank the Battlefield community. The feedback has been instrumental in helping us shape something we are all proud to show! Keep it coming, our journey together is just getting started," Zampella added, alluding to future content releases coming in Battlefield 6's post-launch seasons (Season 1 begins on October 28).
Indeed, the community's feedback played a very important role in helping EA and developer DICE settle on a more traditional approach for Battlefield 6, rather than the controversial direction of Battlefield 2042.
Indeed, the community's feedback played a very important role in helping EA and developer DICE settle on a more traditional approach for Battlefield 6, rather than the controversial direction of Battlefield 2042 that saw classes removed for Rainbow Six Siege-like "Specialists" with unique abilities, significantly reduced the impact of environmental destruction, and more.
By comparison, Battlefield 6 brings classes back with tons of new class-specific gadgets to influence the outcome of a match in nifty ways, along with the most advanced map destruction in the franchise's history, and a wide variety of maps and modes to play. There's also a special custom games creation tool called Portal that's similar to Halo Forge, allowing fans to cook up their own gameplay experiences.
It's a return to roots that's ultimately yielded critical success, with Battlefield 6 reviews near-unanimously positive and achieving a "Generally Favorable" score of 84/100 on Metacritic. On Steam, too, it's got a "Mostly Positive" rating, with 76% of user reviews giving it a blue thumbs up.
Notably, that user review score is expected to fly even higher as time goes on; the majority of the negative reviews the game has at the moment were given due to Battlefield 6 bugs and launch issues. Some of these have already been resolved or have started to subside as DICE works to keep the game's servers in good shape, and the ones that haven't are being investigated.
Ultimately, it's awesome to see Battlefield 6 doing so well at launch speaking as a longtime fan of the series, though the success is hardly a surprise.
Ultimately, it's awesome to see Battlefield 6 doing so well at launch speaking as a longtime fan of the series, though the success is hardly a surprise; I knew the second I saw August's Open Beta cruise past 500K players and break a Call of Duty record that this game was going to be a gigantic hit.
It may even perform so well that it eats the lunch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, though as my colleague Richard Devine and I wrote in our comparison of the two games, it's unlikely Battlefield will pull Call of Duty fans away if they have a strong preference for the latter's zippy, fast-paced and advanced movement-driven gameplay.
Regardless, I'm hyped to finally jump into Battlefield 6 myself this weekend, and you can too for $69.99 on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, or PS5. There's also the pricier $100 Phantom Edition with some exclusive cosmetics, access to the Season 1 Battle Pass, and more; note that the Xbox version of it is on sale for $89.99 at Loaded (formerly CDKeys).
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