Just one day after receiving a beta version of its new rollback netcode update, BlazBlue: Centralfiction blew past its previous peak player count by more than 700 percent.
The game, which was originally released for Japanese arcades in November 2015 before coming to PlayStation 3 and 4 a year later, saw a total of 4,733 players at least open the game up between 3pm CT on Dec. 6 and the same time on Dec. 7 on Steam.
Previously, BB:CF’s highest player count on PC was 1,031 when it first launched on the platform in April 2017. The game has averaged around 150 average monthly players since then, according to Steam Charts. While these numbers don’t reflect the PlayStation or Nintendo Switch versions of the game, the massive surge in players is a great sign for ArcSystemWorks.
A similar surge happened with Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R when ArcSys pushed a rollback netcode beta live for the 2012 title last October. A 1,300 percent increase in players took the game from a double-digit average to well over 100 players with a peak of 2,330 users. That new average has been maintained to this day, with around 150 players still playing monthly, according to Steam Charts.
ArcSys did launch a big sale following the rollback update announcement at CEO 2021, giving players easy access to multiple games including BB:CF, which has likely helped inflate that number.
Even if that impressive player number drops off a cliff after a few months, seeing so many players jump back into a game from 2016 purely because the online play received a large update is another sign that the community will return to older titles as long as there is reliable netcode. And that is doubly true because the update is still in beta, which means players have to jump through some hoops to get it.
One of ArcSys’ newer titles, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, will also receive a rollback netcode update on PC at some point in 2022, which will also go live for the PS4 version of the game. However, no specific date has been given and it won’t be coming to the Switch, either.
