Star Wars Battlefront 3? Fans call for a new game as player numbers soar

And for many gamers, all this excitement appears to have manifested itself in a sudden urge to play Star Wars Battlefront 2.

The second game in the rebooted Star Wars Battlefront series released in 2017 to fairly mixed reviews, with many citing it as somewhat disappointing in comparison with the original 2005 hit.

But while opinions were somewhat muted on release, repeated updates in the years since have significantly improved the game, with a dedicated community continuing to play it years on.

According to SteamDB, a website which tracks player numbers for all games on Steam, Battlefront 2 has seen a sudden resurgence over the past few weeks.

Battlefront 2's player numbers had stagnated, continually bouncing between 1,000 and 2,000 concurrent players, and even dropping into the 900s at various points during April.

At the start of May, however, player numbers began to dramatically rise, hitting 5,583 players on Star Wars Day on 4th May, and a recent peak of 7,816 on 18th May – the highest player count since January 2021.

One Reddit user commented on the game's resurgence: “Andor got everyone excited to fight the Empire.”

Recent excitement for the game has been so high, in fact, that players are beginning to call on its developer to work on a sequel.

A petition has even appeared on Change.org entitled "Urge EA Games to Develop Star Wars Battlefront 3," calling fans of the game to show their support, although it has only racked up around 1,260 signatures at the time of writing.

Unfortunately, while the game's developers will no doubt be pleased to see such dedicated fans, it feels unlikely that Battlefront 3 is anything more than a dream for many players.

While Battlefront 2 sold a whopping 9 million copies by the end of 2017, it still fell short of EA's sales target – something they blamed on controversy surrounding the game's lootbox system.

Combining the lower-than-expected sales with how much it would cost to develop a new Battlefront game, it's hard to see a world where EA would decide to take the plunge, especially when they're already hard at work on the next Battlefield game.

So, Star Wars Battlefront 3 may never arrive, but for now, it's good to see Battlefront 2 getting some of the love it richly deserves.

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