Surprisingly, Farming Simulator 22 has managed to achieve almost double the number of players of DICE’s Battlefield 2042.
Battlefield 2042 officially launched on November 19th after a week of operating in early access for pre-orders. We criticised the game for its antithetical design choices and incredibly poor PC performance. It seems that other players are feeling the same way – while Battlefield 2042 saw an initial boom of players, those figures are tailing off.
As such, that’s allowed other new games to overtake it with regards to player numbers. The most notable of new releases is Farming Simulator 22 which launched on November 22nd. The incredibly popular simulator game has shot its way up the Steam charts, reaching an all-time player peak of 105,636.
That peak is actually a smidgeon higher than Battlefield 2042’s all-time peak player count which currently sits at 105,397 on Steam. However, this is slightly disingenuous given that Battlefield 2042 is also available via EA’s Desktop PC client. It’s likely that the actual peak player count for Battlefield 2042 is a little higher than this.
What’s interesting to note, though, is that Farming Simulator 22 has seen almost double Battlefield’s number of players in the last 24 hours. The 24 hour peak of Farming Simulator 22 currently sits at 94,744, a huge leap ahead of Battlefield 2042’s 52,524 players.
Is this a wake up call for DICE?
This disparity in player numbers was highlighted on Reddit where some gamers claimed it was an indictment of Battlefield 2042’s poor quality. The title of the post reads, “This is a wakeup call to fix the game.”
However, some gamers were quick to point out that Farming Simulator is actually just a great game in its own right. “Many gamers simply have a very self-centered view of gaming, and fail to realize that casual gaming is a much bigger market,” writes one user.
It’s true that it’s difficult to compare Battlefield 2042 directly to Farming Simulator 22 with each other. They belong to totally different genres, after all. It’s also worth mentioning that Battlefield 2042 has launched at a particularly rough time. It’s unclear whether the team at DICE knew 343 Industries were to launch the Halo Infinite Multiplayer early a few weeks ago, but it surely can’t have helped Battlefield 2042 player numbers.
As it stands, Halo Infinite player numbers are sitting above both Farming Simulator 22 and Battlefield 2042. The current all-time peak of 272,586. Halo Infinite has already become the most popular Xbox title on Steam.
DICE is already hard at work to improve Battlefield 2042. It has released an extensive roadmap and two huge patches have already addressed plenty of the game’s issues.
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[Featured Image Credit: Steam/EA/DICE/Giants Software]