Battlefield 2042 post-mortem blames poorly-received launch on remote working (and Halo)

[Daniel Sims]

Cutting corners: This week, EA and DICE gave the most explicit acknowledgment yet of their failures associated with the launch of Battlefield 2042 last year. However, even this admission laid much of the blame on external factors, including the pandemic and a competing game's launch.

Xfire reports that EA COO Laura Miele led a post-mortem discussion on Battlefield 2042 during an internal Town Hall tele-meeting. In the 20-minute talk, she went over the challenges EA and DICE went through, leading to the game being one of the most unpopular in Steam's history.

Hundreds of thousands of BF2042 buyers have signed a petition asking for a full refund from EA.

Since day one, players complained about numerous bugs and a long list of missing features compared to previous Battlefield games like server browsers, VOIP, persistent lobbies, and a lot more.

Miele said one issue with BF2042’s development is that DICE had to significantly rework Frostbite, calling what the game shipped on essentially a whole new engine. Xfire notes that this rebuild took a year and a half, which may have taken development time away from other features.

Switching to working from home halfway into development because of the global pandemic also introduced unexpected challenges. However, Miele also claimed that after they’d started to make some progress on fixing bugs following last summer’s beta, Microsoft launched Halo Infinite in a much more polished state, which made the latest Battlefield look bad.

From now on, EA plans to keep working to improve the game. In that respect, the company delayed the season-one expansion until some time this summer.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/93451-battlefield-2042-post-mortem-blames-poorly-received-launch.html

 

[Sherwoodnt]

I blame it on those people who pre-order these games, filling the pockets of AAA developers who cave to investor/whiner pressure to release broken games.

 

[Dimitriid]

I don't disagree, but not for the reasons they think: People finally had more time to dedicate to their hobbies including some gaming. If I had to guess, a lot of them decided "Well no actually, I don't really enjoy this crappy EA games now that I have had some time to try other games or even other hobbies altogether"

They're also not going to be able to recover easily from people realizing they've been buying damn snake oil for years basically out of tradition and inertia: the gameplay you really liked all those years back is just not enough to justify the constant and overwhelming push for you to spend all of your money on the stupid games. Underlying gameplay has not changed for the better so you're expected to pay more (Once the content, microtransactions, etc.) for a formula that's just stale at this point.

EA and companies like them might need to just give up on trying to both charge full retail, dlc AND microtransactions and just go free-to-pay. I would say "Go back to make GOOD GAMES" but well, we all know that ain't happening in this NFT-everything era of gaming dystopia.

 

[antiproduct]

I blame it on those people who pre-order these games, filling the pockets of AAA developers who cave to investor/whiner pressure to release broken games.

Yup, probably by the time they fix the game, it'll be half price or less. I've gotten burned from getting pre-orders years back and I've learned my lesson. I'll wait for the reviews unless I've beta/pre tested it beforehand.

 

[winjer]

 

[hahahanoobs]

If Cyberpunk and No man's sky can come back, and people are still waiting for Star Citizen, I still have faith in BF. lol

I have to. I'm the scum that pre-ordered the gold version and need a good BF game!

 

[Burty117]

If they just come out and U turn on the specialists, I'd have some hope for this game.
This just confirms they know the fans never wanted it but they aren't willing to change it.

So never mind, its a dead game to me now, if I wanted to play CoD, I'll just play CoD.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

"However, Miele also claimed that after they’d started to make some progress on fixing bugs following last summer’s beta, Microsoft launched Halo Infinite in a much more polished state, which made the latest Battlefield look bad."

Shame on Microsoft for actually releasing a game that is mostly finished. They got balls for doing that. Developers might actually have to stop using their customers as guinea pigs.

The last Battlefield game I cared about, meaning, that I actually even played was Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam. I think that was the name of it.

 

[Watzupken]

I feel it is very easy for them to push blame here and there, I.e. working remotely. It is true that it may impact work to some extent, but almost every aspect of the game is poorly executed or thought out in my opinion. So the problem is more likely that they started with very unambitious changes/ gameplay as they try to milk the Battlefield IP, and everything went further south from there. They cut out single player campaign to save cost and development time, so that itself should cut them some slack to focus on the multiplayer aspect of it. Yet, most of the features is about doubling down on the more popular features out there. To me, if they fail to acknowledge that there are deeper problems than "working remotely", I can only assume the IP to get worst over time.

 

[Fearghast]

The game is broken by design and not sticking to core Battlefield gameplay - you can fix engine, you can fix broken sound engine, you can add scoreboard ... but they certainly won't add core features like commander, classes, destruction, detailed animations etc.

 

[texasrattler]

My issue is why not just delay the game? Sure it was alrdy delayed but the game clearly wasnt ready. On top of that, misleading consumers about features that arent even in the game. So they release a game knowing that it wasnt even close to be ready. EA / Dice deserve what they get. Lawsuits, refunds, the game is in shambles. Its sad to see but this shouldnt even be allowed to happen. Company still making millions off a broken/unfinished game. Laws need to change or be made so this cant happen.

 

[texasrattler]

The words that all companies use "in the name of covid". Everyone is blaming covid. Yes covid has changed the world forever but thats no excuse for any company to release a product thats not finished.

 

[whateversa]

Their response is total nonsense. They released a game that wasn't finished - period. They also sell it before its finished with release dates which is a really dumb repeating mistake they make. Software development timelines are not perfectly predictable, but they treat it as such.

 

[Nobina]

If Cyberpunk and No man's sky can come back, and people are still waiting for Star Citizen, I still have faith in BF. lol

I have to. I'm the scum that pre-ordered the gold version and need a good BF game!

They will come back, but in the next BF game which you will pay $60 for, likely preorder that as well thinking it will not suck cause they surely had to learn from this.

 

[Puiu]

Shipping on a reworked engine is not an excuse.

 

[Puiu]

If Cyberpunk and No man's sky can come back, and people are still waiting for Star Citizen, I still have faith in BF. lol

I have to. I'm the scum that pre-ordered the gold version and need a good BF game!

Pre-orders of games? You've lost your way in this world. You've become something vile, something to be hated by others.

 

[SirDigby]

However, Miele also claimed that after they’d started to make some progress on fixing bugs following last summer’s beta, Microsoft launched Halo Infinite in a much more polished state, which made the latest Battlefield look bad.

This is such a piss poor excuse, "we look bad because another company did it better", idk if anyone at EA remembers the horrendous reaction to Halo Infinite at E3 when it launched the first gameplay trailer in 2020, and then they spent A YEAR AND A HALF improving it.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

EA has been steadily getting worse over the last 2 decades to the point where they can't even launch a product properly.

 

[Puiu]

EA has been steadily getting worse over the last 2 decades to the point where they can't even launch a product properly.

they've been doing this for much much longer than 2 years.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

they've been doing this for much much longer than 2 years.

Did you miss the "2 decades" part?

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Battlefield 2042 isn't the worst thing in the world.

I'm just annoyed with the lack of progression attributes (my attachments keep resetting) and the lack of more maps.

Cyberpunk, Battlefield 3 and 4 weren't perfect at launch either, but I still had fun playing them.

 

[Puiu]

Battlefield 2042 isn't the worst thing in the world.

I'm just annoyed with the lack of progression attributes (my attachments keep resetting) and the lack of more maps.

Cyberpunk, Battlefield 3 and 4 weren't perfect at launch either, but I still had fun playing them.

The difference is that those games weren't barebones with very few features. BF3 was fun, especially after they managed to fix some of the bigger issues.

 

[Puiu]

Did you miss the "2 decades" part?

guess I was too tired. I read it as years