Over 9,000 People Were Sitting on the Battlefield 6 Open Beta on Steam Messing About With Settings — Nearly as Many People Who Were Playing 2042

It looks like EA may have a hit on its hands after over 9,000 people were sitting on the Battlefield 6 open beta on Steam after the pre-load went live.

You could pre-load the game as early as 8am PT yesterday, August 4, letting fans download the Battlefield 6 open beta ahead of early access opening at 1am PT on August 7 (here’s IGN’s guide on how to get in on the action).

According to SteamDB data, there was enough interest for the Battlefield 6 open beta to hit 9,463 concurrent “players” — days before the open beta itself goes live. At the time of this article’s publication, the beta had 3,805 concurrent users.

So what are people doing with the open beta? Lots of players are getting ahead of the game and setting their options, taking 30 minutes or so to edit user interface colors and weapon Field of View, for example.

Others are just using it to share their excitement with friends. “I have 6.4 hours in the beta total so far,” said redditor gruggers1. “I literally just sat in the lobby and chatted with friends in the in game voice chat.”

Some are reporting having to spend time getting around EA’s frustrating restrictions on PC launch. It looks like unless you have Secure Boot turned on in your BIOS, the Battlefield 6 open beta won’t run at all, so there may be players trying to sort that out, too.

“So nice to be able to test if the game boot up, set everything up and be prepared for the most exciting moment,” added redditor rafahuel.

As many have pointed out, there were nearly as many people sitting on the Battlefield 6 Open Beta’s menu screen as there were people actually playing the last Battlefield game, 2042, on Steam, which is quite something. (9,463 24-hour peak for the Battlefield 6 open beta versus 11,245 24-hour peak for 2042).

So, what does this mean for Battlefield 6? From EA’s perspective, it suggests there’s significant interest in the game. EA has said it’s all-in on Battlefield 6, so there’s significant pressure on it to perform. It will be interesting to see the concurrent figures on Steam when the open beta goes live.

Meanwhile, Battlefield 6 producer Jeremy Chubb has said fan-favorite Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was a “huge inspiration” for developing the shooter’s upcoming instalment.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].