The 2017 Star Wars shooter game, Battlefront 2, had over ten thousand players active on Steam during the peak in January 2021. This was when Battlefront 2 was the most popular according to 2024, due to developers removing microtransactions and adding more content, causing an increase of players. The game lost popularity as EA and DICE forwarded their work into other games such as Battlefield, leaving Battlefront 2 not updated causing a huge lack of players. It was considered a dead game.
In late April of 2025 an unexpected huge resurgence of players occurred to the abandoned game Battlefront 2. The player count increased by more than 600% (the percentage is still growing). Everyone was in shock how an abandoned game all of a sudden gained a surprisingly large number of players. And in late May, Battlefront 2 broke its previous record in 2020 by 3,000, but the player count continued rising until on May 26, Battlefront 2 had 18,635 active players, a difference of approximately 8 thousand. The great resurgence was a mystery, but some theories provided answers.
The astonishing skyrocket of players on Battlefront 2 was a deep mystery, but the reasons were found. The Star Wars series Andor released a second season which became popular. The season included actor Muhannad Ben Amor who talked about Battlefront 2 saying “Grew up with Battlefront 2 – been a veteran since day one.” Muhannad then posted his 469 hours of screen time of the game on Instagram. Additionally, the Star Wars 2025 celebration mentioned the video game Fortnite is collaborating with Star Wars, creating a chapter releasing on May 2nd. This introduced Fortnite players to Star Wars games. Star Wars day or May 4th also brought an escalation of players as fans play Star Wars games as a tradition on Star Wars day. Afterwards, fans continued playing the game since the problem of a lack of players was solved. Finally, the possible biggest rise of players is because of the yearning of a sequel, Battlefront 3. Even Muhannad joined them, saying “Star Wars gotta give us Battlefront 3 ASAP.” People knew the best way to get Battlefront 3 was to increase the player count of Battlefront 2 by an enormous amount. They were successful. There has even been a rumor that some of the developers announced that Battlefront 3 is in the process of being created.
Battlefront 2 was thought to be a dead game. It was thought to be completely over and would be shut down due to an extreme lack of players. But that all changed in 2025; roughly 20 thousand new players started to join. The game even became the #1 most trending game on Steam at one point. Currently there are 13,890 players and the number is expanding. This is one of the most famous player resurgences in video game history.
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