The resurgence of 2017 multiplayer shooter Star Wars Battlefront 2 might have been quite a surprise to many, but it looks like the popularity of the game has been reaching great new heights. According to IGN, analytics firm Circana has confirmed that Star Wars Battlefront 2 has become the 12th best-selling game in May in the US.
While the exact reason of the resurgence of popularity for the shooter is difficult to pin down, it might come down to the fact that several fans of the Star Wars universe had been feeling nostalgic for some multiplayer action in the setting. The positive critical reception of TV show Andor also likely had a hand in the game becoming popular again.
Circana analyst Mat Piscatella noted that the game started seeing a rise in player counts around the time that the 20th anniversary for Star Wars: Episode 3 – Revenge of the Sith came around in early May, which also saw a re-release of the movie. While the player count also started reaching new heights, it has also, he noted, started falling back down a bit. However, June saw yet another spike in player counts.
“The player surge for Battlefront 2 started with Revenge of the Sith‘s 20th anniversary re-release back in early May, then really picked up with Andor,” said Piscatella, according to IGN. “Players peaked in the week of May 25 and then started to fall back a bit. There was another bump in mid- to late- June as the game was put into various sales and things as well but that’s a story for two weeks from now.”
Overall, the top 20 best selling games chart for May in the US is led by FromSoftware’s latest outing, Elden Ring: Nightreign, as well as id Software’s DOOM: The Dark Ages coming in at number 1 and 2 respectively. Fellow newcomer game The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is still sitting pretty strongly at number 4. A lot of the rest of the chart is dominated by the usual suspects, however, including NBA 2K25, Grand Theft Auto 5, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and Minecraft.
Other interesting additions to the top 20 list are is Codemasters’ latest outing, F1 25, as well as Capcom Fight Collection 2 – both of which came out in the month. Helldivers 2, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Split Fiction are also solidly sitting in the list.
Last time we heard about Star Wars Battlefront 2 was back in May, when the game had started breaking its own concurrent player figure records. At the time, the game had garnerned a new all-time peak of 18,635 players, beating its previous record from January 2021 which had 10,489 concurrent players. At the time of publishing, the current all-time peak comes from just 17 days ago (courtesy of SteamDB), which had almost 36,000 concurrent players.
At the time of publishing, Star Wars Battlefront 2 seemingly has around 17,000 players in-game right now. The 24-hour peak for the game has also broken the record set in May, with more than 21,000 concurrent players.
