The Battlefield 6 beta doesn't properly start for two more days, but that isn't stopping thousands of eager hill campers from getting in on the action. The beta peaked at over 9,000 concurrent players on Steam yesterday after preloading opened.
Presumably most of those people popped in for a few minutes to get some formalities out of the way—optimize shaders, scope out interesting settings, and pre-tune graphic options. It's not a bad idea if you want zero barriers to play later this week.
That much makes sense, but what's a little puzzling is the thousands of people still idling in the menus. As I write, over 5,000 people are "playing" the Battlefield 6 beta, which currently consists of this splash screen and nothing else:
Do they know something I don't? Is there a secret input combination to unlock Conquest nobody told me about? Do they believe lining up early means they'll be the first through the doors? Maybe they just like the menu music.
Barring that, I have to believe folks are just that psyched about a promising new Battlefield. I get it—even though Battlefield 2042 turned things around after a hard launch, Battlefield 6 looks immediately better. I played four hours of multiplayer in LA last week, and it's still all I can think about.
The Battlefield 6 beta kicks off on Thursday, August 7, for Battlefield Labs members, EA Play Pro subscribers, and anyone who got access through Twitch drops last week. The beta goes public for the rest of us from August 9 to August 10.
