Arc Raiders currently attracts five times more players than Battlefield 6

EA put a lot of pressure on Battlefield 6 to play, and it seems to have delivered, at least at launch. What the latest Battlefield doesn't seem to have is staying power, as two months after its release, competing game Arc Raiders is doing a much better job of keeping its player base intact.

Arc Raiders and Battlefield 6 came out in October and immediately racked up huge numbers on Steam. Nearly 750,000 people played Battlefield 6 at its peakand that was even before its free-to-play battle royale mode Redsec joined the party. Meantime, Arc Raiders peaked at nearly half a million concurrent players. Not as high as Battlefield, but just as, if not more, impressive since it's a brand new game and not the latest addition to an ongoing behemoth of a series.

People came for Battlefield, but they stay for Arc Raiders

Even more impressive than the respective games' launch numbers is how those numbers look today. While Battlefield's concurrent player count has fallen off a cliff, Arc Raiders is holding strong. You could even argue that his numbers have improved depending on how you frame him.

A raider swinging a crowbar on screen in Arc Raiders.

Although Arc Raiders had 253,000 people playing it on release day, that number kept growing as more people became aware of its existence and that it could be pretty good. A week later, there were over 400,000 of you playing Arc Raiders at the same time on Steam, and the game never looked back. Although it was never much higher, constantly hits over 400,000 players according to SteamDB, people are coming back to the game every day.

The raider hides behind cover while three others search for him in the Arc Raiders.

Arc Raiders' best weapon has become even more powerful thanks to an exploit

Players change the kettle to an SMG.

Lofty Concurrent Peak Battlefield 6 is a distant memory

Although Battlefield 6 peaked much higher, it failed to maintain those numbers. After hitting nearly 750,000 players at launch, its numbers have been steadily declining ever since, according to SteamDB. The launch of the first season at the end of October briefly saw Dice's latest entry in the Battlefield series hit 500,000 again, but since then the number of Battlefield players has steadily declined.

A tank and some soldiers in Battlefield 6.

While this is to be expected and Arc Raiders is on the edge here, what is particularly concerning is the lack of Redsec impact on Battlefield's numbers. Despite being free-to-play, Redsec has had no impact on Battlefield 6's player count, at least not on Steam.

Fast forward to the end of December, and while over 400,000 people are still logging in and playing Arc Raiders on Steam every day, Battlefield 6 is attracting around 80,000 players a day. On the other hand, it looks like quite a few of you were able to gift Battlefield 6 over the holidays, as its daily peak has been steadily increasing every day since Christmas Day.