Battlefield 6 Loses 85% of Playerbase, ARC Raiders Reigns Supreme

Battlefield 6’s player count has taken a nosedive over the past month, whereas ARC Raiders has managed to retain roughly 91% of its all-time peak player count– but is this more a result of ARC Raiders’ quality, or Battlefield 6’s faults?

ARC Raiders being successful wasn’t a surprise to me. There was a decent amount of hype behind the game prior to release, and developer and publisher Embark Studios did a phenomenal job of marketing it.

However, I was surprised by how successful it’s been. I had a feeling it would be a hit, but I just would have never assumed it would be this big of a hit.

Comparatively, Battlefield 6’s popularity didn’t shock me either. Call of Duty fans have been growing increasingly exasperated with Activision’s handling of the series as of late, which meant that Battlefield 6 suddenly became a more enticing alternative.

In short, EA knew what they were doing when they scheduled Battlefield 6 to release an entire month before Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

All that being said, I would be the first to admit that the current player count numbers for both games are slightly baffling me.

As detailed in an article by Forbes' Paul Tassi, when you compare Battlefield 6’s all-time player count peak on SteamDB to its current current 24 hour all-time player count peak, it would appear that the game has experienced an 85% drop in player numbers.

As of writing, Battlefield 6 peaked at 747,440 players on October 10, 2025 (its release day), but peaked at roughly 80,841 players in the last day.

If you ask me, that’s actually pretty normal. Online games’ player counts naturally drop off over time, and it’s (usually) not fair to compare their release date player count numbers to literally any other day following their release (as the overwhelming majority of games reach their player count peak within their first 48 hours of release).

Battlefield 6 Season 1 official promo image, EA

You know what’s not normal, though? Whatever the hell is going on with ARC Raiders.

ARC Raiders peaked at 481,966 all-time players on November 16, just over two weeks after its October 30 release date. Considering the game is a new IP, positive word of mouth is likely what caused that jump.

That isn’t the weird part, however. On December 28, ARC Raiders reached a 24-hour player peak of 439,118 players on SteamDB. That is a bafflingly low drop of only 9%.

This is borderline unheard of where multiplayer games are concerned. Plenty of games get content updates and balance patches that cause a sudden surge in returning players, but almost matching their all-time player count peak two months after release is a very, very rare feat.

So, what’s going on here? Has Battlefield 6 truly just fallen off? Or is ARC Raiders the exception to the rule here? I’d wager it’s the latter.

I’ve seen a lot of people online state that ARC Raiders has “retained” 91% of its playerbase, but I don’t think that’s actually the case.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s clearly doing a good job of consistently bringing back pre-existing players, but I also think that word of mouth is bringing in more new players.

On the flipside, even though Battlefield 6’s drop-off isn’t unheard of, it would seem that it’s not doing a great job of enticing those who haven’t played it yet to give it a go.

Personally, I’ll be far more interested in seeing how these numbers look at the end of February, because that’s the point where we’ll be able to discern if Battlefield 6 is truly cooked or not.

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