In brief: Typically, when a game is as old as the original Star Wars: Battlefront, users don't expect much in the way of updates years down the line. Indeed, in many cases, aging games tend to lose features as multiplayer servers shut down and official support grinds to a halt. However, for one reason or another, Battlefront received an unexpected update today that might just revive its multiplayer scene.
Star Wars: Battlefront lost proper multiplayer gameplay with the closure of GameSpy many years ago. Today's update, however, adds in support for Steam multiplayer, meaning you can finally dive back into some frantic ground battles with your friends (or frenemies).
Battlefront's latest (and likely final) update brought a few other changes, as well. The list isn't long, but support for additional languages – French, Italian, German, and Spanish – has been added (we're not sure if this means full localization, however), additional "audio support" has been implemented (whatever that means), and several screen size-related menu and gameplay issues have been patched.
If you've never played the original Battlefront before, now is a great time to check it out. With Steam multiplayer support finally implemented, we're seeing an uptick in activity on the game's Discussion boards, which correlates with an increase in online player numbers.
For the past few months, the game rarely saw more than 60 players online on any given day. Now, that number has shot up to over 250 players, and we fully expect it to increase further as news of this update spreads. In the meantime, that should be more than enough players for you to find a game or two.
While Battlefront is a bit dated from a visual perspective, it still looks surprisingly good for its age. Perhaps more importantly, the game is still fun to play, and at only $5 on Steam (50 percent off), you have very little to lose by giving it a shot.