More than 19 million people picked up Electronic Arts' Star Wars Battlefront 2 for free from the Epic Games Store.
That's according to a post on Twitter from the EA Star Wars account, in which the company thanks its audience for their "continued support," even though new content isn't being added to the shooter anymore. EA stopped updating the title on April 29th, 2020.
"We’ll watch your careers with great interest! May the Force be with you, troopers."
Speaking in June 2020, Epic wrote that it had hit 61 million monthly active users following the launch of The Vault earlier that year, which saw the company giving away games for free. Meanwhile, the Fortnite firm's peak concurrent user figure clocked in at 13 million. This was due, in part, to the company giving away Grand Theft Auto V for free on its platform.
Having had exclusivity to make console and PC games based on the Star Wars IP since 2013, EA is now no longer the only company making titles set in a galaxy far, far away. The newly-revived LucasFilm Games brand revealed earlier in January that it was working with French publishing giant Ubisoft on a new story-driven open-world release developed by that company's Massive studio.
EA is still making Star Wars games, it just isn't the only one doing so. Since it landed the license in 2013, the company has released two Star Wars Battlefront games, Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Squadrons as well as mobile release Galaxy of Heroes. The firm's The Old Republic MMO has been live since 2010, before EA scored the license.
The company has also cancelled three Star Wars projects, that we know of. At the end of 2017, Visceral's Ragtag was canned, before news of another game dubbed Orca from EA Vancouver was cancelled broke in January 2019. Finally, in February 2020, news emerged of another title called Viking from Criterion and EA Vancouver that had been dusted.
