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Delta Force “Botted” Player Counts on Steam Allegations Addressed by Team Jade

by James Lara August 18, 2025 3:31 pm in News

Those who took part in either of the Open Beta weekends for Battlefield 6 might have noticed that, despite drawing in a ton of players, Team Jade’s Delta Force seemed to have been completely unfazed, at least in player count on Steam, as the title held strong numbers throughout the Battlefield 6’s beta weekends.

This has prompted many in the Battlefield community to speculate that the studio was “botting” their player count to keep appearances up that a lot of games are playing Delta Force.

For those who think that’s the case, we asked that very question to Team Jade when we got the chance.

Delta Force Steam Numbers Are the Real Deal Despite Battlefield 6 Turnout

In an exclusive interview with MP1st, we sat down with Shadow Guo, the game director on Delta Force, to ask some burning questions around the console release and the state of the game. One of these questions was around one of the biggest controversies we’ve seen online: whether Delta Force was someone botting their active player count on Steam.

MP1st: Since launch, the game has maintained a steady player base close to 200K on Steam alone. Some people online are skeptical of this and claim these could be “fake” numbers or Team Jade somehow inflates this, what’s your response to this?

Shadow: Those numbers are real. Delta Force is a globally available game, and sometimes players in certain regions might have trouble finding a match quickly, which can lead to players thinking the player base isn’t as big as it is. That said, we’re working on matchmaking improvements to help reduce those gaps so players everywhere can jump into games more quickly.

To add to this, the idea that Delta Force’s Steam chart looks “odd” and artificially inflated is not a particularly sound statement. While I am not saying it’s impossible to bot (read: artificially inflate) your Steam count, it’s very unlikely given the resources to do so. Not only that, but looking at Delta Force’s chart, they aren’t out of the norm like many would have you believe. The game follows a trajectory similar to other live-service games on Steam, with a specific time of day experiencing a surge in players, followed by a sudden drop later. It’s been like this consistently since launch, although the numbers have increased, which is also not unusual.

And here are some other top online titles:

You can see that every game on this list has a consistent pattern of when players log in and log off, every day for the last 30 days. Sure, some days are higher than others, but looking at each chart, they all experience high dailies and then sudden lows when it comes to concurrent players.

There is absolutely nothing unusual about Delta Force’s active concurrent count on Steam, despite many comparing it to Battlefield and assuming the Open Beta for Battlefield 6 would have altered those numbers. The game is more popular than some people realize, especially in certain regions, and when you have a dedicated player count who actually enjoys the game, well, that’s even less surprising than to see that kind of chart pattern.

With the console release arriving tomorrow, we’re sure Delta Force’s popularity will continue to grow. No doubt players is looking to fill in for Battlefield 6 until its October release, and with the beta ending today, Delta Force is not a bad alternative to check out.

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Tags: Delta Force Team Jade

James Lara

A gamer at heart, James has been working for MP1st for the last decade to do exactly what he loves, writing about video games and having fun doing it. Growing up in the 90's gaming has been in his DNA since the days of NES. One day he hopes to develop his own game.

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jason chen

8 months ago

As a player with almost 1000 hours on the game, I have a lot of questions about its player base. I’ve used Legofast (their partner region-changing app) to connect to different servers, and besides EU, all the other servers are empty. SA, ME, SEA, OCE, and MENA are basically dead, and NA is suffering. Warfare is filled with bots without any indication (AI). Operation takes more than 20 minutes in other maps. This game is underrated globally and there’s no denial of it. On Twitch, it averages 2–3k views, and most of the streamers with 1k or more aren’t even English speakers. Global has its own separate build compared to the Chinese version, where the Global player base comes mostly from Western countries.

Now let’s dive into why I think it’s botted players:

There were speculations of botted reviews on Steam during the launch of this game, exposed by TheCadWoman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb4P7V6UpRA. They used generic American names with very low levels.
Their YouTube viewer count is obviously botted. For example, there’s a video with 700k views but only 60 comments and 400 likes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABJiWmvK-U0. This was also exposed by USA Specialist when comparing it to Marvel Rival.
If you compare their Steam chart to Marvel Rival, which launched almost the same time as Delta Force, with an all-time peak of 642,333 players (more than double Delta Force’s peak), Marvel dropped its player base like any other live service game, while Delta Force somehow maintained or even increased its numbers.
Their anti-cheat system (GTI Security) bans 10,000 players every single month globally. However, their game somehow keeps recapturing those lost players while exponentially adding new ones month after month.
All Global players had access to the Battlefield 6 beta, where you can see every other FPS game’s player base dip, but Delta Force maintained its count despite being global.
They pay any creators (Creator Program) who upload about their game and even offer a pay-per-view scheme, which is a very strange move if the game is supposedly doing so well. They also had a rough console release that got pushed to August 19, just before BF6 launched. That looks like desperation to keep their game alive.
It’s cheaper to pay a warehouse to run Delta Force and boost its player base in China. This practice is also very common there.

Conclusion
Their failed promise of a console release, blatant view botting, review botting, suspicious development timeline, desperate attempts, and lies all lead me to think they inflated their player base. I highly recommend watching this video about how Delta Force boosts its numbers by GhostGaming and USA Specialist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6XUI1wOPdo