Battlefield 6 players hit server queues as it rockets to over 500k Steam concurrents just 25 minutes after launch

War is hell. Also, war is irresistible. That’s if Battlefield 6’s launch concurrents, which smashed past GTA 5, Among Us, Starfield, and other heavy-hitters to become the 20th most-played game in SteamDB’s records about, uh, 25 minutes after launching. As I write this, the game sits at a current and all-time peak of 521,000 concurrent players. I think most of them are in a queue. Queues, like hell, do the numbers.

This is quite impressive, and I imagine is just the kind of thing that DICE and, less salubriously, EA wanted to see when it hit the big red launch button on its latest entry in the series.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I think most of them are in a queue. At time of writing, Battlefield community hotspots mostly consist of competitive queue-posting. ‘There are 417,000 people ahead of me!’ boasts one. ‘There are 458,000 ahead of me!’ ripostes another. The good news is that queues appear to be moving quick.

It’s no surprise. I’m not a Battlefield follower and even I’ve noticed how frenzied the hype for this particular release has been, where other fields of battle have passed me by. People are gagging for it, and I suspect I know why. For one, people—including our FPS czar Morgan Park—seem to like it quite a bit, and it looks to my inexpert eye like a return to form for a series that’s been in the doldrums for a little while now.

Which leads me to reason two: Battlefield’s not the only series that’s been struggling to find itself recently. Call of Duty—and its fanbase—also don’t seem to be tearing things up right now. That means a lot of disaffected shootman-likers looking for somewhere to call home, and wouldn’t you know it? Here’s Battlefield 6 to roll out the red carpet for them.