Quick answer: Battlefield 2042 launched broken in November 2021 and became one of the worst reviewed games on Steam. DICE then spent two and a half years fixing almost every complaint: the scoreboard came back, voice chat came back, the four classes came back, and every launch map was rebuilt. Seven seasons shipped instead of the four promised. Then Battlefield 6 arrived in October 2025 and the audience left. Steam concurrents have sat near 1,000 all year. It is a genuinely improved game that almost nobody is playing, and it still carries a $59.99 list price. Only buy it in a deep sale, and only for Portal.
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Almost every Battlefield 2042 review you can find was written in the week of 19 November 2021. Those reviews describe a game with no scoreboard, no squad voice chat, no classes, seven enormous empty maps and a long list of bugs. Every one of those complaints was accurate at the time.
Every one of them has also been addressed. That is the part the old reviews cannot tell you, and it is usually where a piece like this would end with a cheerful "give it another go".
We are not going to do that, because there is a second half to the story. DICE fixed the game and the players did not come back. The repair job finished in 2024, Battlefield 6 landed in October 2025, and the Steam population fell off a cliff it has not climbed back up. So the honest question is not "is it fixed", it is "is a fixed game worth buying when there is barely anyone in it".
The numbers, both halves of them
| Measure | Score | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Metacritic critics, PC | 68 | 74 reviews. PS5 63, Xbox Series 61 to 64 |
| Metacritic users | 2.4, Generally Unfavorable | 5,568 ratings. 78% negative |
| OpenCritic | 33% of critics recommend | rated Weak |
| Steam, all reviews | Mixed, about 47% | over 320,000 reviews lifetime |
| Steam, last 30 days | Mixed, about 65% positive | roughly 1,200 recent reviews. This is the fix showing up |
| Steam all-time peak | 107,376 | 21 October 2023, nearly two years after launch |
| Steam concurrents now | around 1,000 | monthly average has sat near this figure all of 2026 |
Hold those last two rows next to each other. The game peaked at over 107,000 players almost two years after it launched, which tells you the repairs genuinely worked. It now runs at about one percent of that. Both facts are true and most coverage only ever reports one of them.
The 2.4 user score is worth a caveat. That number was set in late 2021 by people reviewing a broken product, and Metacritic user scores effectively never recover because almost nobody goes back to revise one. The recent Steam figure of roughly 65% positive is a far better guide to what you would actually be buying today.
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Every launch complaint, and what happened to it
This is the table that makes a 2021 review obsolete. Each row is a criticism from the launch coverage and what DICE eventually did about it.
| The 2021 complaint | What happened | Status |
|---|---|---|
| No proper scoreboard | Added in update 3.3, March 2022 | Fixed |
| No squad voice chat | Added April 2022 | Fixed |
| Specialists replaced the four classes | Update 3.2.0 during Season 3 put every Specialist back inside Assault, Engineer, Support or Recon, with class gadgets and weapon proficiencies | Fixed |
| Maps too big and empty, too much running | Every one of the seven launch maps was rebuilt with tighter cover and shorter routes. 128 player Breakthrough was removed in May 2022 | Fixed |
| Only seven maps | Seven seasons added more, plus the whole Portal library of remade classics | Fixed |
| Launch bugs and crashes | Years of patches through to update 8.7 in 2025 | Largely fixed |
| Hazard Zone is the weakest part | DICE abandoned it on 24 May 2022, six months after launch. Still playable, never received a single new map | Confirmed, then dropped |
| Content is "months or years away" | Seven seasons arrived instead of the four originally promised, ending with Turning Point on 19 March 2024 | Delivered, then stopped |
Read that column of "Fixed" and you can see why people who stuck with it get defensive. The 2021 reviews are not describing the same product. The launch-era prediction that Hazard Zone would go the way of Battlefield V's Firestorm turned out to be exactly right, and it only took six months.
Development has ended. On 9 April 2024 Battlefield general manager Byron Beede confirmed that Season 7, Turning Point, would be the last season. DICE said it would keep providing challenges, events and maintenance but would stop delivering seasons, and moved its people onto the next game. That next game is Battlefield 6, which launched on 10 October 2025. Do not buy Battlefield 2042 expecting new content. There will not be any.
What the population collapse actually looks like
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Steam monthly averages tell the story better than any review score. These are concurrent player figures, and Steam is only one platform, but it is the only one with public numbers.
| Month | Average concurrent | What was happening |
|---|---|---|
| August 2025 | around 21,000 | Battlefield 6 beta ended and players filled the gap here |
| September 2025 | around 21,000 | the last healthy month |
| October 2025 | around 5,100 | Battlefield 6 launched on the 10th. Down about 76% |
| November 2025 | around 1,900 | down another 62% |
| March 2026 | around 1,900 | a brief sale-driven bump, then back down |
| September 2026 | around 960 | the quietest month on record |
| October 2026 | around 970 | roughly 1% of the 2023 peak |
For comparison, Battlefield 6 has been averaging somewhere around 35,000 to 43,000 concurrent Steam players across 2026. The sequel has roughly forty times the population of its predecessor.
Two things to weigh before you treat those numbers as fatal. First, Steam is one storefront. Plenty of people own this on the EA app, PlayStation and Xbox, and none of those publish concurrent counts, so the true population is higher than 1,000. Second, Battlefield 2042 fills matches with AI soldiers. Community reports describe evening European lobbies running with a substantial share of bots, though nobody outside DICE can measure that precisely, so treat the specific proportion as player anecdote rather than fact. The practical effect is that you will usually get into a match. Whether it is full of people is a different question.
What is actually good about it
The shooting was never the problem. Bullet drop, weapon handling and the weight of each gun have always been at series standard, and the gunplay survived every other controversy intact.
Breakthrough is where the game comes alive. Conquest on these maps can still feel like a walking simulator between objectives, but Breakthrough squeezes the fight down to two points at a time and keeps you in it. If you only play one mode, play that one.
Portal is the real reason to own this game. It rebuilds maps from Battlefield 1942, Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, including Arica Harbor and Caspian Border, and hands you rules you can rewrite. You can put two armies from different decades against each other, randomise loadouts on every spawn, or just run a straight remake of a map you have not seen in fifteen years. There are limits and you need an external website to build anything complex, but the in-game server browser always has something strange in it. If you came up on the older games, read our Battlefield V write-up for the entry Portal is quietly arguing against.
The near-future setting also holds up better than expected. Qatar, beached cargo ships in India, open hangars in Singapore, and weather events that genuinely reshape a fight. The tornado still looks remarkable.
What is still wrong
Conquest still has dead space. The map reworks helped a great deal, but 128 players spread across these distances means some spawns are still a long jog from anything happening.
Hazard Zone is effectively a museum piece. It is still in the menu, it never got a new map after May 2022, and the launch criticism that it was a dull extraction mode on maps built for something else was never answered because DICE stopped trying.
The Specialists are still Specialists underneath. Putting them inside the four classes fixed the structural problem, but the named-character-with-a-gadget presentation remains, and if what you wanted was a faceless soldier in a role, this is a compromise rather than a reversal.
And the price is genuinely indefensible. The Steam list price is still $59.99, with an Elite Edition at $89.99, for a game that stopped receiving seasons in 2024 and runs at about a thousand concurrent players. It is included with EA Play, and it discounts extremely hard, with trackers recording it as low as a few dollars. Paying list price for this would be a mistake.
One more thing worth knowing. EA confirmed in 2026 that Battlefield Hardline would be delisted and its servers shut down. There is no announcement of anything similar for Battlefield 2042 and its servers are running normally, but this is an always-online game with no offline mode, so what you are buying is access for as long as EA keeps the lights on rather than a permanent copy. Factor that into what you are willing to pay.
Buy, wait or skip
| You are | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Looking for a current Battlefield to live in | Buy Battlefield 6 instead | Metacritic 82 to 84 and roughly forty times the players. This is not a close call |
| Already subscribed to EA Play | Just install it | It is included. Costs you nothing to see whether Portal grabs you |
| Here for Portal and the classic maps | Buy in a deep sale | Genuinely worth a few dollars. Never worth $59.99 |
| You refunded it in 2021 | It is a different game now | Classes, scoreboard, voice chat and reworked maps all arrived. Recent Steam reviews run about 65% positive |
| You want new content to look forward to | Skip | Seasons ended in 2024. Maintenance only |
| You mainly want Hazard Zone | Skip | Abandoned in May 2022 and never finished |
| Considering it at full price | Absolutely not | $59.99 for a finished live service game with about a thousand concurrent players |
Verdict: this is the most thoroughly repaired bad launch in the series, and it arrived too late to matter. DICE gave back the scoreboard, the voice chat, the classes and the maps, shipped three more seasons than it promised, and the audience had already gone. What is left is a competent shooter with excellent gunplay, one outstanding mode in Portal, and a population of roughly a thousand players on Steam. Worth a few dollars in a sale if the old maps call to you. Worth nothing near its asking price. If you want a Battlefield to actually play with other people, the current one is the answer.
Frequently asked questions
Is Battlefield 2042 still worth playing?
In a deep sale or on EA Play, yes, mainly for Portal and Breakthrough. At full price, no. The game is finished and lightly populated, but it is in far better shape than its reputation suggests, with recent Steam reviews running about 65% positive.
Did Battlefield 2042 ever add classes back?
Yes. Update 3.2.0 during Season 3 assigned every Specialist to one of the four classic classes, Assault, Engineer, Support and Recon, with class gadgets, weapon proficiencies and class icons on the scoreboard.
Is it still getting updates?
No new seasons. Season 7, Turning Point, launched on 19 March 2024 and was confirmed as the last on 9 April 2024. EA said it would continue with challenges, events and maintenance only.
Is Hazard Zone still in the game?
Yes, but it was abandoned in May 2022. It never received any map released after that point. Treat it as unfinished content rather than a mode.
How many people still play it?
Steam averages have hovered around 1,000 concurrent players through 2026, against an all-time peak of 107,376 set in October 2023. Console and EA app numbers are not published, so the real figure is higher, and the game also fills matches with AI soldiers.
Should I buy this or Battlefield 6?
Battlefield 6, for almost everyone. It scored 82 to 84 on Metacritic against 68 here, it is actively supported, and it has vastly more players. Buy 2042 only as a cheap second purchase for Portal.
Why is the Metacritic user score only 2.4?
Because it was set in November and December 2021 by people reviewing a broken launch, and user scores almost never get revised afterwards. It is an accurate record of how launch felt and a poor guide to the current game.
Can I play it offline or solo?
Not offline. It is always online with no campaign. You can play solo against AI in some modes, but you need a connection at all times.
Where to go next
- The obvious comparison is the sequel. Read our Battlefield 6 coverage before you spend anything here.
- We asked whether the new one could shift the market in Battlefield 6, can it dent Call of Duty.
- For the other side of that fight, see Call of Duty is giving up.
- On why big budget shooters keep launching like this, our piece on why AAA games are not fun anymore covers the pattern.
- For a live service game that survived a near-death experience instead, read our The Division 2 review.
- And for the games that simply got switched off, see the live service graveyard.
- Something single player instead: Kena Bridge of Spirits, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy or Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart.
- Browse the Shooter, FPS and Multiplayer hubs.
Subscribe to us on YouTube for more gameplay breakdowns and reviews: ClubAssassins on YouTube.
Sources: Metacritic and OpenCritic aggregate pages, the Steam store listing and review breakdown, official EA update notes for versions 3.2.0, 3.3, 4.0, 5.1.0, 7.0.0 and 8.7.0, the EA development update of 24 May 2022 announcing the end of Hazard Zone development, and the 9 April 2024 blog post from Battlefield general manager Byron Beede confirming Season 7 as the final season. Player figures are drawn from public Steam concurrent tracking. Caveats: Steam concurrent counts cover one storefront only and exclude the EA app, PlayStation and Xbox, so the total population is higher than the figures shown. The proportion of AI soldiers in live matches is a community observation, not a measured or published number. Steam review percentages move daily and recent-review windows are small samples. Prices and sale discounts vary by region and change without notice, so check your own storefront. The exact release date of update 3.2.0 is given by season rather than by day because published sources disagree.
Compiled and fact-checked by Hammad Ahmad, IGGG Guides Editorial.