Battlefield 6 beta beat Counter-Strike 2, Peak, Marvel Rivals, and Helldivers 2 to be the biggest game on Steam in North America, but it couldn't top Call of Duty on console

The Battlefield 6 beta has come and gone, and by all accounts it was absolutely massive. New stats suggest it was the biggest Steam game in North America for a time, and one of the biggest games on console, too – though it seems a whole lot of Call of Duty loyalists on PlayStation and Xbox were unwilling to tear themselves away from COD to try it out.

For the week ending August 16, the Battlefield 6 beta was the top game on Steam across the US, Canada, and Mexico, as Mat Piscatella of industry analysis group Circana reports on Bluesky. It's beating out titles like Counter-Strike 2, Peak, Marvel Rivals, and Helldivers 2 for that top spot, as measured by weekly active users.

Notably, that picture is somewhat different than the one we get from Steam's official concurrent player numbers, where titles like CS2, Dota 2, and PUBG all stayed ahead of the BF6 beta. But concurrents and weekly active players are very different stats – with the latter typically seen as far more valuable to industry observers – and many of Steam's top games enjoy much of their popularity outside North America, where Circana's analysis does not cover.

Circana Player Engagement Tracker - Top 15 Titles by Total Weekly Active Users (Not Concurrent) - W/E Aug 16, 2025 - The Battlefield 6 beta ranked 1st on Steam across the US, Mexico and Canada, while also ranking 4th on both PlayStation and Xbox in the US.
— @matpiscatella.bsky.social (@matpiscatella.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-08-25T16:49:01.463Z

But this is all just talking about Steam users on PC. On console Circana says that Battlefield 6 hit the number four spot by weekly active users in the US across both PlayStation and Xbox, just behind Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Roblox.

The Call of Duty client, of course, encompasses pretty much every modern COD title from Warzone to Black Ops 6, so perhaps the comparison to Battliefield is a little unfair, but honestly seeing a beta even come close to rivaling the live-service juggernauts on console is impressive in itself.

The other detail worth noting here is that, on Steam, Call of Duty didn't even make Circana's top 15 charts for the week ending August 16. Maybe there's something to infer about console players preferring COD while Battlefield remains a PC-first franchise, or there really are that many COD fans sticking to Battle.net or the Windows store, but I'll leave that debate to the platform warriors among you.

If you need help sorting through the Battlefield 6 classes ahead of launch, we've got you covered.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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