Battlefield 2042 currently has fewer concurrent players on Steam than Battlefield 1, 4, or 5.

Per SteamDB data, Battlefield 2042 has seen a maximum of just 2,090 players online in the last 24 hours, compared to 2,195 in Battlefield 4, 7,498 in Battlefield 1, and 21,709 in Battlefield 5. Battlefield 4 arrived in 2013, and it’s a marker of how troubled the latest game in the series has been that a much older version is seeing more activity.

The popularity of Battlefield 2042 on Steam has gradually declined since it was released in November last year and currently sits at less than 2% of its original peak player-base of 105,397, even seeing decline through a free weekend in December.

The game has had a fairly turbulent development period both before and after its launch, first realised in September when its release date was pushed back a month. Several issues still materialised in Battlefield 2042’s early launch however and continued when the game officially released.

It quickly became one of Steam’s worst-reviewed games despite being fairly popular, with players noting that several promised features were missing and voicing their grievances on the subreddit that moderators threatened to shut down.

Battlefield’s 2042’s Season One (essentially its Battle Pass) was delayed in February to Summer 2022 as developer DICE instead chose to focus on more pressing issues like adding a scoreboard to online matches, but this update was also delayed a few days later.

Publisher EA admitted around the same time that Battlefield 2042 did not meet expectations, and soon after a petition asking for refunds started online that more than 220,000 players have now signed.

DICE announced at the beginning of March that it was aware of several issues within its map design and said it understood why players were calling the game a “walking simulator”. The maps will be fixed one by one starting with Kaleidoscope but not until summer at the earliest.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.