Valve’s most successful weekend was also successful for the biggest games on their platform, as Battlefield 2042 is having a bit of a comeback.
Just yesterday, we had reported on how last Sunday, on November 27, 2022, Steam saw its largest numbers of concurrent users, meaning it was the largest number of Steam users online, either playing Steam games or navigating the Steam client, all at one time. The number varies between 31,906,400 to 31,968,428 users, depending on if you get your numbers from SteamDB, the independent data tracker, or from Valve themselves.
Today we have learned that Battlefield 2042 had its highest number of concurrent players since their last peak at January 2022. This was attributed to both the Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend, as well as the launch of Battlefield 2042’s third season, Escalation.
Battlefield 2042 was very much a seriously beleaguered game upon its launch and in the months after, because of quality and content issues. While Battlefield remains a popular brand, this particular incarnation seemed to harm that brand’s name very severely. Unfortunately, the game’s issues are mostly attributed to problems with game development in the middle of the pandemic.
And so, Escalation is a more important update compared to similar season threes for other live service games. At this point Battlefield 2042 is now at a more acceptable level of quality, and also promised some exciting new content, such as the new map called Spearhead, based deep in the Swedish wilderness. While Electronic Arts did not share more specific numbers or data, they are likely happier with the game and how its performing now, thankfully coming just in time for the early holiday season.
The other great performer from last weekend was Red Dead Redemption 2. While this game is available on both the Rockstar Games client and Epic Games Store, they were able to get over 60,000 players online last weekend, as we had reported yesterday.
In this case, Valve may have taken the actions that made this happen. Last October, the company pushed a major update to their own hardware, the Steam Deck. That update finally fixed a long standing bug to make Red Dead Redemption 2 playable on the handheld again. Pairing that with Black Friday sales made it only natural for Steam Deck owners, and regular Steam users, to have dipped in to buy and play the game.
It’s highly likely that there are even more games on Valve’s platform that benefited from that huge weekend, even if we ultimately don’t hear about it.
Source: Twitter