Electronic Arts announced over the weekend that, due to an unexpected surge in players for Battlefield 4, it was having to expand its servers on that game. So many players have been jumping onto the older game, presumably in preparation for the upcoming release of Battlefield 2042 later this year, that EA is having to make accommodations for them.
The surge appears to have started after the Battlefield 2042 gameplay trailer revealed during Xbox’s E3 show. SteamDB records a healthy spike in player activity on the game, though, curiously, it seems to have started at the beginning of June. This would have been around the time when lots of new details about the game leaked and EA announced the reveal event. It peaked at just under 12k players on June 13, the same day the gameplay trailer was revealed.
EA responded to the slow-down on its support site, saying: “Since then, many of you have jumped back into Battlefield 4 to already get a taste of the return to all-out-warfare. We’ve been monitoring your experience and noticed queue times in the US West region were far longer than in other regions. Good news, we’ve increased server capacity for this region – you can expect less waiting, and more playing. We’ll continue monitoring queue times and will make further adjustments as necessary.”
As for why Battlefield 4 is getting this surge in player interest, and (to the best of my knowledge) neither Battlefield One nor Battlefield V is receiving similar attention, the most likely explanation is the setting. While the latter two games are set in the past, whereas BF4 has a similarly futuristic setting to 2042. We’re probably going to see more of BF 2042 at the EA Play event, which happens on July 22 (and we’re lowkey hoping it includes a couple of non-Battlefield game reveals).
Source: Eurogamer