Prior it it's recent announcement, there was a lot of excitement from the Battlefield community over a new game set in the near future. The past few games in the franchise have gone back to explore the World Wars, which removed a lot of the gadgets and vehicles fans had come to love. Battlefield 2042 brings things back into the modern area and as the debut gameplay shown at E3 2021 revealed, ATVs, little bird Helicopters, and more modern tech make up a big part of the experience.
Along with the new setting, Battlefield 2042 also attempts to bring back the destruction that the series is known for. Fans will not only be able to blast through walls, but each map has special events and weather like tornadoes that adds another destructive element to every match. The announcement clear reinvigorated the fanbase and even had big impact on DICE's past Battlefield games as well. In fact, Battlefield 4 may have been the biggest recipient of a major spike of players recently.
In a post on the EA forums, Community Manager Straatford revealed that Battlefield 4 has seen a huge uptick in players since the latest game's reveal. In fact, the queue times in the US West region have recently become incredibly long, leading many players to have to sit in line waiting to join a match. Considering Battlefield 4 originally launched back in 2013, had multiple expansions like Final Stand, and saw three additional games in the franchise launch after it, support has waned considerably.
However, fans inspired by the modern combat of Battlefield 2042 have seemingly returned to Battlefield 4 in droves due to it being the last game in the franchise with similar weapons and gadgets. DICE has noticed the rise in players and to help lower the queue times, additional server capacity has increased to help players find matches faster. EA and DICE will continue to monitor wait times and will make adjustments as necessary.
From a PC perspective, Battlefield 4 has recently benefited from a number of promotions outside of the Battlefield 2042 reveal. Just recently it was made available as a free giveaway through Prime Gaming, letting members download the game for free until June 21. According to the SteamDB charts, Battlefield 4 has seen a massive rise in players since June 1, with the lifetime concurrent players continuing to rise to over 11,000 players alongside the reveal of Battlefield 2042. It's expected that a similar effect has happened to the console versions of the game as well, especially on Xbox where Game Pass subscribers can download EA games.
Battlefield 2042 releases on October 22 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: EA