Some intrepid team at Disney squirreled away far from the reach of daylight has released a new update for Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (note the colon). The Pandemic-developed game was published in 2005, and long after the studio that made it was closed, it’s still getting updates.
In October, just before the release of Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017), multiplayer functionality was restored to the original Battlefront 2 via an update. Overnight, the game received another patch aimed at further improving multiplayer. The new patch introduces minor bug fixes and performance optimization, enhances lobby functionality, fixes the way Steam usernames are displayed, and improves the accuracy of ping calculations.
It’s strange that Battlefront 2 (2005) is still receiving updates, and stranger still that it’s not obvious who’s actually working on the game. There have been no announcements of EA reviving or supporting older Star Wars games, and Disney’s internal game studio Disney Interactive closed in 2016. Given that the account that posted the patch notes in Steam had the username Disney, it seems like there’s at least some team internally that continues to work on games, even if only to maintain them. Or, it could be a contractor, who knows?
Battlefront 2 (2005) doesn’t directly compete with Battlefront 2 (2017), but it’s hard not to say that the older title is the superior game. Unfortunately, EA couldn’t follow the outstanding blueprint Pandemic laid down for them with the previous title, and the recent Battlefront 2 is a mess. Hopefully, sometime in the future, we’ll see support for dedicated servers return for Battlefront 2 (2005), and maybe even Steam Workshop integration.
The older Battlefront 2 has close to 1,500 average players per day since the multiplayer patch in October, and hopefully this resurgence of interest in the game will fuel further efforts to improve and maintain it.
