Heralded as the Cyberpunk 2077 of Battlefield games, Battlefield 2042 has been off to an extremely rocky start with no end in sight. Its Steam reviews are abysmal, player counts have dropped to far below previous installments during the same period, and EA has been unusually quiet though at least adamant about sending out bug fixes for the game. While I enjoyed the beta quite thoroughly, I was surprised at the reception to the full release and chose to abstain from purchasing (which come to think of it was probably the best choice). If the game couldn’t be in any worse of a state though, Battlefield 2042 is now hosting a free weekend over on Steam.
On paper, you might be thinking “wait a minute, what’s so bad about that?”. Well reader, this comes less than a month after the game was released across many platforms. In other circumstances, this wouldn’t be cause for concern, but the idea of doing it so early after launch implies that EA and DICE aren’t happy with the game’s current player numbers. As such, they want as many people to try it as possible so they can potentially make a few extra dollars or have some more players come into the fold. While I’d love to give the benefit of the doubt and say it’s out of the kindness of their hearts, its current situation leans heavily in favor of salvaging the game than trying to create as great of a community as possible.
Now, this isn’t to say you shouldn’t try the Steam free weekend for Battlefield 2042. In fact, if you’ve been debating buying it or wish to see what the fuss is all about, then go and download it. And hey, if you purchase it and become a major fan, that’s genuinely great! But while finding a new game to enjoy is a good thing, the message this sends still isn’t the greatest. Time will tell for how Battlefield 2042 fares in the coming months, and how many more of these free weekends we’ll see pop up. My guess is this won’t be the last time.
