Thousands of people are so eager to blow stuff up in the Battlefield 6 beta they're idling in the main menu

The Battlefield 6 beta doesn't properly start for two more days, but that isn't stopping thousands of eager hill campers from getting in on the action. The beta peaked at over 9,000 concurrent players on Steam yesterday after preloading opened.

Presumably most of those people popped in for a few minutes to get some formalities out of the way—optimize shaders, scope out interesting settings, and pre-tune graphic options. It's not a bad idea if you want zero barriers to play later this week.

Do they know something I don't? Is there a secret input combination to unlock Conquest nobody told me about? Do they believe lining up early means they'll be the first through the doors? Maybe they just like the menu music.

Barring that, I have to believe folks are just that psyched about a promising new Battlefield. I get it—even though Battlefield 2042 turned things around after a hard launch, Battlefield 6 looks immediately better. I played four hours of multiplayer in LA last week, and it's still all I can think about.

The Battlefield 6 beta kicks off on Thursday, August 7, for Battlefield Labs members, EA Play Pro subscribers, and anyone who got access through Twitch drops last week. The beta goes public for the rest of us from August 9 to August 10.

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.

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