Battlefield 6 raises alarm bells. EA’s shooter isn’t recovering in 2026 and continues to show worrying numbers on Steam. Battlefield 6 starts the year with a new low on PC; EA’s shooter lost 67% of its players in December. Battlefield 6 falls below 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, raising concerns for 2026.

For major multiplayer launches, the release window is practically everything when it comes to revenue. Battlefield 6 did its job on that front, moving more than 10 million copies, but EA clearly didn’t plan for most of those players to vanish within just a few months. Battlefield Studios’ long-term approach is to keep the shooter profitable through cosmetics, Battle Passes, and similar live-service hooks for years. Right now, though, Steam retention is far from where it needs to be.

Battlefield 6‘s Steam Collapse

Based on SteamDB figures, Battlefield 6 has recently hit a fresh low on Steam, slipping under 100,000 concurrent players and dipping as low as 35,000 at the weakest point of the day. That doesn’t mean the game is dead, but there are several red flags worth paying attention to, including the fact that the shooter shed more than 173,000 players in November. The most troubling numbers, however, came in December, lining up with the latest update for Battlefield 6 Season 1.

As the chart in the original report shows, Battlefield 6 has lost close to 380,000 users, which translates into a 67% drop from its launch player base. Holding a 700,000-player launch peak for months is obviously unrealistic, but it’s still striking that such a steep decline is already being highlighted so heavily in January. Of course, the title may be performing very differently on consoles than it is on Steam, which remains the biggest PC storefront.

So why did Battlefield 6 fall this hard on Steam? The most common community explanation isn’t simple burnout, but rather a pile-up of frustrations that kept building week after week: ongoing technical issues like netcode and hit registration, patches that introduced fresh bugs or even worsened performance in some situations, and design choices that many players feel prioritize monetization and progression over tightening up the core gameplay.

The Steam Trajectory of Battlefield 6

On top of that, Season 1 hasn’t delivered enough meaningful new content for some players to stay invested for months. It also doesn’t help that Battlefield Studios’ communication has been criticized for lacking a clear short-term improvement roadmap, pushing many players toward other competitive shooters like Call of Duty (Warzone or Black Ops 7) or Arc Raiders. Battlefield 6 Season 2 is expected to arrive in the coming weeks, with the goal of reigniting interest in EA’s flagship shooter.

Source: 3djuegos