Battlefield 2042 needs to go free-to-play to succeed, data suggests

Battlefield 2042 may need to go free-to-play to succeed on Steam, but only after the game is stable and fixed.

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Battlefield 2042's player count has tanked on Steam. Significant controversy has dropped Battlefield 2042's player counts by 97% since launch to present day. There's one potential way EA can turn things around.

Data from Steam DB suggests that EA's best bet right now may be to release BF2042 as a free-to-play game. The shooter's concurrent players shot up from 18,907 to 47,883 during Battlefield 2042's free weekend on Steam, but dropped sharply to 19.516 after the freebie ended. This is the kind delivery mechanism that EA needs to leverage, possibly even breaking up Battlefield 2042 into segmented, separately-monetized pieces.

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Here's a look at SteamDB's figures:

• November 19 - 105,397
• December 16 (before free weekend) - 18,907 (-82%)
• December 18 - 47,883 (+153%)
• December 21 - 19,516 (-59%)
• January 18 - 8,078 (-59%)
• February 18 - 3,149 (-61%)

This strategy will only work if the game, well, actually works and is mostly bug-free, so before EA does anything, it will have to fix Battlefield 2042's myriad of issues.