By Michael Koczwara | Source bioniklabs.com
1/25/2021

Over 19 million players added Star Wars: Battlefront II to their Epic Games library earlier this month when the online multiplayer shooter was free to download for a one-week period.

"Thank you so much for the continued support, even after our final content drop! We’ll watch your careers with great interest," the official EA Star Wars account tweeted on Monday.

While it's not clear if the 19 million figure includes players who already own Battlefront II on other services or if these players downloaded the game after adding it to their account, the number is still impressive.

Battlefront II originally released in 2017 and it's final content update was added in April 2020. The game was free to download from the Epic Games Store from Jan. 14-21. During the first day of the promotion, some players experienced error messages in regards to the influx of new users. In response, EA worked on increasing the capacity to better handle the new player count.

The Epic Games Store has been running a free game a week feature since it first launched in December 2018. The service kicked off with Subanutica and was soon followed by indie hits like What Remains of Edith Finch, The Witness, Inside and Celeste. Even Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V made the list when it was free for a week in May 2020. As long as players add the game to their library during the week it is offered for free, the game can then be downloaded and played at any time.

While most games that were part of Epic's free game a week service do not have readily available stats for comparison, the Battlefront II figure still stands out. In the three days of its free week, Football Manager 2020 managed to ring in 1 million players, while Total War Saga: Troy launched as a free game for its opening week last August only and saw 7.5 million copies claimed.

In other Star Wars news, a patch for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was released to help boost performance on next generation consoles and Ubisoft is set to create a new Star Wars game.

Photo courtesy of EA Games

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