Two Months Later, Arc Raiders Is Proving It Has Staying Power While Battlefield’s Numbers Continue To Fall
Josh has been playing video games for longer than he can remember, kicking things off with a Master System before upgrading to a Mega Drive. Covering the industry since 2018, if a game has a strong story – or even better, the decisions you make determine the course of that story – odds are he’s going to like it. Or, you know, put Sonic or Pikachu on the cover and that’ll get his attention too.
EA put a lot of pressure on Battlefield 6 to perform, and it appears to have delivered, at least at launch. What the latest Battlefield doesn’t seem to have is staying power, as two months on from its release, rival game Arc Raiders is doing a much better job at keeping its player base intact.
Arc Raiders and Battlefield 6 both released in October and immediately racked up huge numbers on Steam. Almost 750,000 people were playing Battlefield 6 at its peak, and that’s before its free-to-play battle royale mode Redsec joined the party. Meanwhile, Arc Raiders peaked at almost half a million concurrent players. Not quite as high as Battlefield, but just as, if not even more impressive, since it’s an entirely new game and not the latest entry in an ongoing behemoth of a series.
People Came For Battlefield, But They re Staying For Arc Raiders
What’s even more impressive than the respective games’ launch numbers is how those numbers look today. While Battlefield’s concurrent player count has fallen off a cliff, Arc Raiders has held firm. You might even argue that its numbers have improved, depending on how you frame it.
Even though there were 253,000 people playing Arc Raiders on release day, that number kept going up as more people learned of its existence and that it might be pretty good. A week later, there were more than 400,000 of you playing Arc Raiders on Steam at the same time, and the game has never looked back. While it has never gone much higher than that, it consistently hits more than 400,000 players according to SteamDB, with people returning to the game every day.
Battlefield 6 s Lofty Concurrent Peak Is A Distant Memory
Even though Battlefield 6 hit a much higher high, it has failed to maintain those numbers. After hitting almost 750,000 players when it launched, its numbers have been on a steady decline ever since, according to SteamDB. The launch of season one at the end of October briefly saw Dice’s newest entry in the Battlefield series hit 500,000 again, but from that point on, Battlefield’s player count has been on a consistently downward trajectory.
While that’s to be expected, and Arc Raiders is the outlier here, what’s particularly worrying is the lack of impact Redsec had on Battlefield’s numbers. Despite being free-to-play, Redsec had no impact whatsoever on Battlefield 6’s player count, at least not on Steam.
Discover the factors behind peaks and staying power in modern games—subscribe to the newsletter for clear, data-driven coverage of player retention, Steam trends, methodology, charts, and comparative analysis like Battlefield vs Arc Raiders.
Subscribe
Discover the factors behind peaks and staying power in modern games—subscribe to the newsletter for clear, data-driven coverage of player retention, Steam trends, methodology, charts, and comparative analysis like Battlefield vs Arc Raiders.
By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Fast forward to the end of December, and while more than 400,000 people continue to log in and play Arc Raiders on Steam each day, Battlefield 6 is pulling in around 80,000 players per day. On the bright side, it looks like quite a few of you might have been gifted Battlefield 6 for the holidays, as its daily peak has been gradually increasing every day since Christmas Eve.
We want to hear from you! Share your opinions in the thread below and remember to keep it respectful.
Please respect our community guidelines. No links, inappropriate language, or spam.
Battlefield 6 more than half the players in any game are just non player bots. Games arent fun with bots. Also its steam exclusive on PC which caps the potential player base significantly.
2025-12-29 18:07:48
