Battlefield 6 beta sets a series record on Steam with a peak of 520,000 players

The Battlefield 6 open beta has started with a real full house — almost 520,000 simultaneous players. This number is a new record for the series on Steam.

The peak occurred only an hour after the launch of the first beta, which is not surprising given long queues before the start. Currently, the game is among the most popular shooters on the platform, behind only Counter-Strike, PUBG, Apex Legends, and several other titles. Call of Duty is — 20 positions lower in this ranking. Gamers had to wait half an hour or more to get to the server. And they noted that this time EA worked on optimization, so the problems of the previous parts were avoided.

Or almost all the problems. Along with the influx of players, cheaters returned, despite Javelin anti-cheat with kernel-level protection and Secure Boot verification. Enthusiasts quickly managed to find a way around it. They said that they simply turned off the Internet for a few seconds while the game was loading

In just 40 hours of the beta, Javelin blocked more than 330,000 attempts at fraud or system interference. Later, the Battlefield Positive Play team deleted the confirmed accounts of the offenders. However, the nuance is that the anti-cheat worked chaotically and en masse — those who did not use workarounds at all were punished, while cheaters remained in the game.

EA has recognized the problems and encouraged continued reporting. But players are still outraged: Linux users are blocked altogether, while others have to provide deep access to their PCs just to run the game. But for those who have modern hardware and are not afraid of cheaters (or is one) — the second beta will start very soon. We advise you to think about the goodies in advance to withstand the half-hour server queues

The full release of Battlefield 6 is scheduled for October 6, 2025 for PC and consoles. The title tells about a mysterious military organization Pax Armata, which decided to organize a world-class conflict. But, as we can see, players are most interested in multiplayer, which will have nine maps. For now the dataminer leaked information about them so we know about locations in Egypt and the United States, as well as in the mountains and on the coast

Source:  Tom’s Hardware / PC Gamer