The disaster surrounding Battlefield 2042 has forced EA to conduct a failure analysis. In an internal meeting on February 15, officials from the publisher reportedly discussed for about 20 minutes what caused the shooter’s failure. MeinMMO tells you the conclusion they reached.
After the disappointing launch of Battlefield 2042, the game has never been able to recover. Hundreds of thousands of players demand a refund in a petition, even cheat providers have given up on the shooter.
In a conference earlier this month, EA has already commented on the catastrophic state of Battlefield 2042. According to trusted insider Tom Henderson, there was again an internal meeting among the responsible parties at EA. After about 20 minutes of error analysis, they supposedly reached a conclusion.
The reasons behind the disaster of Battlefield 2042 include the pandemic, the surprisingly early launch of Halo Infinite, and PC gamers with excessively high expectations.
PC gamers with high performance expectations were identified as culprits
What was discussed internally at EA? Laura Miele, Chief Studios Officer at EA, led the internal discussion about Battlefield 2042. She reportedly stated that while EA had been successful in the past and present, it is “really important to admit when we make mistakes.” One of those mistakes is Battlefield 2042, “which did not meet the expectations of our players and also significantly missed our own expectations.”
In the eyes of EA officials, several reasons are said to be the cause of the catastrophic state of Battlefield 2042.
Unfortunate PC gamers are the reason for the failure: One of the factors that led to the failure of Battlefield 2042 is the Frostbite engine. Due to its outdated technology, it had to be fundamentally renewed for Battlefield 2042 to run on it. This update alone reportedly took over 18 months of development time.
Along with these engine problems came performance issues, which imposed a performance limit on PC gamers. This is said to have led to poor Steam reviews for the game, as affected players with good PCs found these restrictions “frustrating.”
These poor Steam reviews from disgruntled PC gamers with high performance expectations are thus partially responsible for the negative sentiment surrounding Battlefield 2042 since its release.
EA states: The number of bugs would have been acceptable, then came Halo Infinite
Halo Infinite is also said to be a reason: Competition from Microsoft is said to have disrupted EA and Battlefield 2042’s plans. Although early patches reportedly improved the bugs, the surprisingly early release of Halo Infinite cast a negative light on Battlefield 2042.
As Tom Henderson writes in his article:
According to EA, however, things took a turn, and that turn was the surprisingly early release of the “Halo Infinite” multiplayer ([Tom Henderson:] I wish that were a joke).
According to Miele, the comparison between the two games was unfavorable because Halo Infinite was a very polished title while Battlefield 2042 contained bugs and was not as polished.
While EA admitted that DICE games repeatedly had bugs and that Battlefield 2042 had them before and at release, the number of bugs in the latest Battlefield was “within expectations.”
It was assumed that DICE could adapt the game in live service by communicating with players and the community. However, Miele admitted that player expectations for live service games have changed. It was not the right decision to hold on to the presumably low standards of DICE compared to earlier games.
Fundamental problems of the game were only briefly mentioned
Another reason for the failure of Battlefield 2042 is said to be the pandemic. Regarding this, Miele is said to have stated:
When you combine all these new innovations and the ambition for the new project with a global pandemic in the middle of the project, where the game teams had to work from home, then we had more new variables in development than ever before.
Laura Miele according to report by Tom Henderson
However, the problems that primarily annoy the community regarding Battlefield 2042 were hardly mentioned. The oversized and boring maps, the specialists, the scoreboard, or voice chat were only briefly touched upon. In this context, reference was made to the promised improvements.
Whether these improvements will be sufficient remains to be seen. Season 1 of the shooter, which was released in November, is not expected to start until summer. Whether the game will still have enough players by then remains the big question. In some regions of the world, the low player count is causing curious issues:
