After months of hype, Battlefield 6 is finally available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S gamers the world over. Developer Battlefield Studios released the legendary franchise's latest offering via Early Access for its Open Beta on August 7, and the multiplayer action shooter, unsurprisingly, has taken over the livestreaming and gaming worlds.
Battlefield Studios will open the biggest Open Beta ever for its latest game for two weekends only, i.e., August 9 to 10 and August 14 to 17. However, as always, a select few players, mostly those closely associated with the series or top influencers, received Early Access a couple of days earlier. It's fair to say the response has been highly positive.
The game has been a hit on livestreaming services as well, with its Twitch stats hitting 898,869 Peak Viewers (PV) and 12.15 million Hours Watched (HW) on the first day. Even before Early Access started, the devs reported that 30,000+ players were waiting in the queue, looking to jump into the game and test its features and explore the map.
With such a force behind it, an incredible 42,549 Twitch channels broadcast their gameplay of Battlefield 6 throughout August 7. Across all livestreaming services, this number was over 88,000, which almost equaled the number of channels Fortnite, usually the king in this metric, achieved for the release of its latest season on the same day.
When compared to other games on Twitch, Battlefield 6 ended as the top name on August 7. It was the only title to attract over half a million peak live viewers, while its watch time was almost seven times higher than the next-best entry. In fact, it was the top-performing category, period, outperforming Just Chatting, a segment that usually dominates all others when it comes to HW.
What has helped build anticipation for the title is the way access to the Open Beta Early Access could be earned. Fans and players could do so by watching certain content creators, and if lucky, they would gain a Twitch drop that contained the code.
Additionally, people with access to BF Labs or subscriptions to EA Play Pro were let in during this early access period on August 7. In fact, with top influencers still playing and exploring the game in its Early Access phase, audiences continue to tune in, hoping to get lucky enough to get the code and experience what the hype is all about themselves.
Moreover, anyone playing the Open Beta could win some pretty cool in-game rewards, a ploy that almost always guarantees more players and viewers. In the above case, gamers earned exclusive prizes, like skins, weapon packages, vehicle skins, and dog tags, giving them an early leg-up in terms of cosmetic appearance when playing with others.
Speaking of influencers, some of the most renowned names from the space jumped on the bandwagon after getting their hands on Early Access. The likes of Michael "shroud" Grzesiek, Timothy "TimTheTatman" Betar , and Rubén "Rubius" Gundersen spent hours trying out the title, putting them among its most-watched and most-popular channels for the day.
TimTheTatman reached a new Twitch channel record when playing Battlefield 6, hitting 2.4 million HW and almost doubling the previous milestone. His livestream also touched 207,744 PV, which made it his second most popular one ever and just the second one to pass 200,000 peak live viewers.
Publisher Electronic Arts will no doubt be pleased with the reception to Battlefield 6 after the previous installment, 2042, was a complete bust. If the industry giant was looking to put this setback behind it with another offering that showed there was still life in the franchise, the new title's Open Beta has gotten off to a flyer.
It also helps that the title has been confirmed to have a Battle Royale mode, which will help it compete with other legendary titles like Call of Duty and Fortnite.
Those who got access to the iconic shooter on August 7 praised its return to a modern setting and the revival of iconic features like the class system. The game also received positive feedback for its multiplayer experience, which includes the return of classes, customizable loadouts, and a revamped Portal mode for creating unique content.
One media outlet also noted that Battlefield 6 brings back the destruction the series is known for, including blowing through walls and bringing down buildings. The game's audio design was also mainly lauded for its intensity and impact.
It's still early days in terms of Battlefield 6's impact on the video gaming and livestreaming spaces, but the journey has gotten off to as good a start as the developers would have hoped for. With the game scheduled for a full release in October, the ongoing Open Beta will prove crucial in ironing out the kinks and improving on what is already working to ensure the BR shooter ends as one of the year's top launches.
Header image via Steam
