Battlefront II’s free week brings in 19 million new players

The sad story of Battlefront II’s support coming to end continues, as EA and Star Wars recently revealed that an astonishing 19 million players entered the battlefront following the game’s free week on the Epic Games store.

Most impressively, that number doubles the game’s initial sales in 2017 of just 9 million, an undeniable sign of just how popular the Star Wars gaming world, and Battlefront specifically, continues to be.

https://twitter.com/EAStarWars/status/1353802773905760256?s=20

The news comes after Epic Games hosted Battlefront II’s Celebration Edition, which includes all post-launch content and cosmetics, for free this past week. To put this in perspective, last year, Epic stated that the store had over 100 million registered users, a number that has likely only grown since.

As has been well-documented, Battlefront II released in a very rocky state, primarily due to the microtransaction controversy. But it made a significant turnaround after, receiving numerous content updates and burgeoning into one of the best Star Wars games under EA’s wing.

Could this potentially inspire a resurgence of support for the game?

With this spike in players, the question becomes: Would EA and DICE consider adding content again?

Most likely not, as the reason for Battlefront II’s initial stoppage was so DICE had ample time and resources to work on Battlefield 6. That situation has not changed, as the game sits in the middle of its development. Secondly, the game does not have a sustainable microtransaction model with enough cosmetics to make the effort worthwhile. And third, Lucasfilm has its priorities in other places at the moment as the gaming world continues to grow.

However, to satisfy the optimistic side of things, there is a chance that EA sees these numbers and decides to convert Battlefront to a fully free-to-play game, flooding it with cosmetics to pay for future content. That’s unlikely, but recent developments indicate an expansion to the franchise in another way might be.

Either way, this latest news is an impressive sign of just how far Battlefront II has come. And even after stepping away from the game a few months ago, it’s even given me a desire to hop back in again. We’ll see if it may even inspire EA to do the same.