Titanfall 2 just got some multiplayer updates, and some fans think more is coming

The Titanfall series of mech-and-human based first-person shooter games continues to have a cult following, several years after the second game in the franchise was released. A few days ago, developer Respawn Entertainment quietly made a few updates that have sent many fans of Titanfall into speculations about the future of the series.

First, as reported by PC Gamer, Respawn released an update for the 2016 released Titanfall 2 that fixed some long-standing multiplayer and matchmaking issues with the game. The update fixed an issue that disconnected many players while they searched for a multiplayer match. Also, the game's featured playlist rotation has been updated after a long while.

The result was a huge jump in online players for the game over the past few days. SteamDB shows that currently, over 21,000 players are online playing Titanfall 2 (at the time of writing).

Then there's the matter of another update for Respawn's free-to-play battle royale game Apex Legends. The official patch notes for the game's Harbingers Collection Event end with this note:

Incoming Transmission…. Subject: Nessie….

1394521200

1477638000

1549267200

PC Gamer says that many folks have figured out that those numbers are in fact the Unix timestamps for the release dates of Titanfall, Titanfall 2, and Apex Legends.

So what does all this mean? Respawn announced back in 2019 that, while Apex Legends and the Titanfall games are both set in the same universe, it had delayed plans to make future Titanfall titles in favor of Apex Legends updates.

Having said that, it has been over four years since since that announcement, and the news of Titanfall 2's matchmaking fix combined with the Apex Legends patch notes tease are making people believe we could get some kind of Titanfall-related announcement in the near future. Whether or not it's a full Titanfall 3 sequel, or perhaps a Titanfall-based update for Apex Legends remains to be seen.

Respawn recently released the third-person action game Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. In 2022, its owner Electronic Arts announced Respawn was working on an unnamed Star Wars-based first-person shooter, and was collaborating with developer Bit Reactor on an unnamed Star Wars-based strategy game. In addition, in May 2023, Axios revealed that Titanfall's director Steve Fukuda was working with a small skunkworks team on a new project.