A surprise resurgence of interest in the 2017 game Star Wars Battlefront II should have developer DICE and publisher EA taking a well-deserved victory lap. But while the developers at DICE are hopefully feeling a sense of pride at the love and interest in the 8-year-old game—does its sudden success cast a shadow on EA’s business strategy?
The question is relevant because on June 22, 2025 the game clocked a record number of concurrent users on Steam, topping out at 35,000 concurrent users logging on to the 8-year-old game, three times higher than the previous peak of 10,000 players in January of 2021.
The surprise surge wasn’t an overnight phenomenon. For almost a decade, a steady stream of Battlefront 2 players have nurtured a healthy interest in the game, keeping it humming at around 2,000 to 3,000 CCU on Steam. Content creators like Bombastic and TheStarBazaar played a key role here, and when a new batch of players picked up the game for $5 on a May 4th Star Wars sale, they and other community groups like Kyber were ready to greet them.
“There’s always a bit of renewed interest in Star Wars around May the Fourth, but I think this year’s Fortnite Star Wars event being a full Season and takeover made people realize they still have a craving for a multiplayer Star Wars shooter,” observed Bombastic (real name Andrew Shelley). “Fortnite doesn’t quite scratch that itch.”
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What really sparked interest, according to Shelley, was the community-led push for what became known as “Resurgence Day,” a bid to publicly campaign for the making of a hypothetical Star Wars Battlefront 3. Interest in the Disney+ Star Wars show Andor—and a public endorsement of Resurgence Day by cast member Muhannad Bhaier—likely also played a role, but the homespun player community was the Rhydonium that exploded when all the friction hit the air.
May 24 came and went with about 18,000 players logging in on Steam. Players stuck around, eventually leading to the June 22 peak. More content creators are flocking to the game, new guides are going up and yet—what has EA said about the surge?
Nothing. The EA Star Wars and DICE social media accounts are silent. Pick through the former and you’ll find promotions for the May 4th sale and posts promoting updates for the free-to-play mobile game Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes as well as the upcoming Star Wars: Zero Company. Search the latter, and you’ll find a mix of 2042 clips from Battlefield 2042 and chatter about the upcoming game.
A years-after-launch burst of player enthusiasm would be a win for almost any game developer. But for EA it’s unfortunately another worrying sign of flaws in its business model—one that’s driven record layoffs across its game studios and may be driving the developer to an expensive disaster.
New Battlefront II content isn’t likely
EA has been caught flat-footed on Battlefront II for the same reason its number of successful series and studios has been shrinking for the last decade: its top-down management style puts developers in inflexible conditions where they can’t respond to industry change and player enthusiasm.
That strategy has put DICE in an unenviable position. It can’t swing into action in response to Battlefront II‘s popularity because it is heads-down on the next Battlefield game, working with a number of other EA subsidiaries to relaunch the series as a live service powerhouse (Ars Technica has reported that said project is going through a rocky patch in development). If everyone’s heads down on Battlefield, there’s no one to double back on Battlefront.
Making new content would also be technically difficult because it ended development 5 years ago. Not only would the tooling be out of date, but there may be serious tech debt and flaws in shipping on modern consoles. Making new Star Wars content also might require EA to renegotiate its license with copyright holder Disney. That doesn’t seem likely, given that CEO Andrew Wilson has repeatedly stated the company is moving away from licensed games.
Image via EA/DICE.
That just leaves the question of a hypothetical sequel. GameDiscoverCo founder (and former Game Developer publisher) Simon Carless doesn’t think this player surge is enough to sway EA on making another Star Wars Battlefront game. Based on his company’s data, he estimated that the game has earned “about $5 million” in gross revenue since May 1st, out of a total of “around $32 million” for its entire lifetime on Steam (Battlefront II only launched on Steam in 2020. It had previously been available on EA’s Origin app).
“While it’s true that its concurrent users are now giant, it’s all via one-off purchases,” said Carless. “We’d imagine that EA sees this as good catalogue revenue, but may or may not see it as a reason to make a new game in the series.” A new game would likely cost at least $60, and players who bought Battlefront II for a few dollars might blink at an expensive successor.
Those are the realities of game development in 2025. But thanks to reporting and statements from former developers, we can see how EA failed to adapt to the shifting environment of online games, all because it was laser-focused on financial growth at all cost.
Battlefront II’s monetization scheme was originally a disaster
That laser focus on profits-at-all-costs was on display when Battlefront II first launched in 2017. The $60 game’s loot box monetization system was so unpopular that EA slashed prices by 75 percent. Shortly afterward, then-Hawaii state legislature representative Chris Lee called for legislation banning loot boxes, referring to Battlefront II as a “Star Wars-themed online casino.” Even if you don’t subscribe to the theory that loot boxes are a form of gambling, it’s fair to say charging extra cash (or demanding 40 hours of in-game playtime) to unlock characters from the films was a stretch.
Having to alter Battlefront II‘s monetization model would have impacted EA’s projected revenue for the game, potentially reducing the company’s enthusiasm for not only the game, but the Star Wars license as a whole.
The fiasco had been a long-distant memory by the time DICE and EA ended post-launch content development in 2020. Ending development while keeping the game’s official servers online fit DICE’s decades-long business strategy. Since 2011’s Battlefield 3, the series has been sold as a premium product with about two years of post-launch content support that could expand post-launch sales. DICE also employed this model for Star Wars Battlefront and Star Wars Battlefront II.
This left EA vulnerable to disruption by companies who could deliver a similar quality level without developing expensive sequels. The same year that Battlefront provoked legislative furor, Bluehole released Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (today known as PUBG Battlegrounds), upending the financial model for live service games. Bluehole had plenty of experience making massively multiplayer online role-playing games, which aren’t designed around an inevitable sunsetting to tee up a bigger-budget sequel.
The problem is clear: for the last decade EA has choked out opportunities for flexibility and surprise hits. Reporting on EA—from its mandate that BioWare to convert its in-development Dragon Age sequel into an online multiplayer game, to Anthem‘s troubled development cycle, to the next Battlefield game has shown a repeating pattern: EA tasking teams not experienced in specific genres with making blockbuster do-or-die games with little plan for long-term support.
This problem is made obvious by the studios not forced exclusively into these meat grinders. EA Motive turned out Star Wars Squadrons and the remake of Dead Space with just three years between them while also juggling support on projects like the next Battlefield single-player campaign. (And Battlefront II‘s single-player campaign!) Its in-development Iron Man Game seems safe for the moment, but CEO Andrew Wilson’s repeated insistence that the company is moving away from licensed games (and the company’s cancelling of a Black Panther game and shutting down developer Cliffhanger Games) place an ever-increasing amount of pressure on that game to do well.
BioWare Austin kept Star Wars: The Old Republic humming along (even if it never hitting the highs of other MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV), building a deep knowledge base for live services and online games the studio could have tapped into. But then EA moved development of that game to external studio Broadsword.
Meanwhile, Wilson recently noted Apex Legend’s revenue is “declining“, while PUBG Battlegrounds and Fortnite continue to hum along. “We do believe there will be a time where we need to do a more meaningful update of Apex as a broad game experience,” he said—but only saying that would take place after the launch of the next Battlefield game. That “update” will be harder to make given how many developers at Respawn Entertainment the company’s laid off this year.
EA’s entire business model has calcified—purely pursuing new big budget megahits in an era where yesterday’s big budget megahits are still topping the charts. For any other company, tens of thousands of players spontaneously bursting into your 8-year-old game would send developers and community managers into action to do something—anything—to celebrate their enthusiasm.
But at EA, it seems if it doesn’t drive growth, it’s not worth even a single post on social media.
About the Author
Senior Editor, GameDeveloper.com
Bryant Francis is a writer, journalist, and narrative designer based in Boston, MA. He currently writes for Game Developer, a leading B2B publication for the video game industry. His credits include Proxy Studios’ upcoming 4X strategy game Zephon and Amplitude Studio’s 2017 game Endless Space 2.
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