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In many gamers' eyes, Battlefield 2042 has been one of the lowest points that the franchise has ever experienced. In fact, many players have returned to Battlefield 2042's predecessor, Battlefield 5 in order to get their fix which has now left the game's player count at an all-time low.
While the game released on November 12 last year, by November 28 Farming Simulator 22 had more concurrent players than Battlefield 2042. This seemed to be a sign of things to come, as the player base has continued to dwindle ever since then. Players have found issues with many different aspects of the game, from the class system being removed in favor of an operator system, to the game's surprising lack of content when compared to previous entries in the series.
All of this criticism began to culminate when back in December last year Battlefield 5 had more active players than Battlefield 2042. This was particularly concerning due to the fact that all developers aspire to make their next game better than the previous one, and having players abandon the most recent entry in a series in favor of its predecessor is not a good look.
reddit.com/r/battlefield2042/comments/ss6co5/its_official_battlefield_2042_is_under_2k_players/
Now Battlefield 2042's 24-hour player count peak is sitting at under 5,000 players. This is a dismal number of players when one considers that the game's peak player count was up at 105,397 only a few months ago.
South Africa normally has a tight-knit Battlefield community, but even these gamers have given up on the game. This has caused an entire region in Battlefield 2042 to be hosted on a single server by one player. This could soon become an issue for other lower populated regions as the game's player count continues to dwindle long before the first season arrives in the summer.
Thousands of players who bought Battlefield 2042 are now petitioning on Change.org to be refunded. The petition recently exploded in popularity and was sitting at 75 000 signatures one week ago. At the time of this writing, the petition was sitting at just under 200 000 signatures and quickly climbing. When the petition reaches the milestone, it will become one of the top signed petitions on Change.org. EA and DICE are yet to comment on the petition, and it is currently uncertain as to whether either entity will acknowledge it.
EA has allegedly considered making Battlefield 2042 free-to-play, however, this will most likely only anger those who bought the game and signed the petition even more. It will be interesting to see how the company handles the situation if and when it comes to a head.
Battlefield 2042 is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.