Battlefield 6 Has Already Beaten Call of Duty in One Aspect

On the back of a highly impressive public beta launch, Battlefield 6 has touched a new peak concurrent player count of more than 521,000 on Steam, which is significantly higher than that of any Call of Duty game ever released on the storefront. This gives major bragging rights to Battlefield over its eternal rival franchise, instilling big hopes for a fruitful comeback of the series later in 2025, with Battlefield 6.

Earlier today, on August 9, EA finally kicked off Battlefield 6‘s highly awaited open beta access, leading to hundreds of thousands of players swarming to the game within hours. As a consequence, it easily raced past Battlefield 2042’s open beta peak concurrent player count of 156,000 Steam users, and became the top release in the franchise, by far, based on this metric. With the ongoing open beta phase scheduled to take place through August 10, Battlefield 6 appears to be racking up more players and breaking notable engagement records every few hours.

Battlefield 6 Open Beta Draws More Engagement on Steam Than Any Call of Duty Game Ever

Battlefield 6 Peak Concurrent Players on Steam: 521,079
Call of Duty Peak Concurrent Players on Steam: 491,670

In another record-shattering feat, Battlefield 6 reached 521,079 peak concurrent players on Steam alone, beating the respective tally of each Call of Duty game by a good margin. More precisely, the upcoming military shooter stormed past the 491,000 mark, which is the highest peak concurrent players recorded for any game in Activision’s highly popular shooter series till now. Interestingly, this accomplishment arrived a full two months ahead of the game’s launch, scheduled for October 10. At the time of writing, Battlefield 6 is also the third “Most Played” game on Valve’s platform, behind only live-service giants, namely Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2.

Keeping in mind that around half a million players are currently in the game on Steam alone, it may be fair to assume the new Battlefield entry has had over a million people tune in to the open beta across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. Such an immense player turnout, even before the game’s official launch, could be a sign of a return to form for the military action IP after Battlefield 2042‘s underwhelming performance. In case that happens, Call of Duty may finally have serious competition in the genre this year, regardless of what Activision’s recent comments may suggest.

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It’s worth noting that the numbers achieved during open beta do not necessarily translate to even bigger numbers at launch. This was seen in the case of Battlefield 2042, which hit a peak of 156K players during open beta but only reached 107K players after rolling out. Therefore, it will be intriguing to see how Battlefield 6‘s player engagement takes shape throughout its two open beta phases and then again at launch. If the ongoing discussion around the game is anything to go by, things seem to be on the up for EA’s FPS franchise.