Battlefield 6 Beta Explodes Past 500K Gamers, Its Anti-Cheat Spanked Over 300K Cheaters
The number of players was initially limited as the first two days of the beta testing phase only included gamers who qualified for early access. However, once the beta became open to everyone willing to sign up, that number went up significantly. According to SteamDB, the game’s open beta managed an all-time peak of over half a million players over the weekend—not bad for a beta version with a fraction of the content coming with the final release.
This is undeniably impressive, but EA still has its work cut out for it if wants to succeed with the game’s launch and beyond. It will need to have a content pipeline in place to feed the seemingly insatiable appetite of online players that have become accustomed to the update treadmill of games such as Fortnite. EA doesn’t need to look very far to see examples of games that went from glowing praise during betas to dropping off like a rock after launch because of a lack of new content, with Halo Infinite serving as the most prominent cautionary tale.
Of course, the success inevitably got the attention of those looking to ruin everyone’s good time. EA’s SPEAR Anti-Cheat Team claims that its Javelin kernel-level anti-cheat system blocked “330,000 attempts to cheat or tamper with anti-cheat controls.” Additionally, players reported 104K potential instances of cheating the team is investigating. It seems the shift to leveraging Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 is at least assisting in the ever-lasting fight against cheaters.
It won’t take long to see if Battlefield 6 has the juice or if players already got their fill of what the game has to offer. The next open beta will take place from August 14 through August 17. This will be the last chance gamers get to take it for a test drive before the new modern warfare shooter launches on October 10.
