Report: EA Admits Battlefield 2042 Failed To Meet Player Expectations, Blames Halo Infinite and COVID

EA has reportedly admitted that Battlefield 2042 “failed to meet the expectations of our players” in an internal meeting, and blamed the failure of the game on factors such as Halo Infinite’s launch and the ongoing COVID pandemic.

According to a report by Xfire, EA held an internal company-wide meeting to discuss Battlefield 2042., where executives spent over 20 minutes examining what went wrong with the game’s launch. Chief Studios Officer Laura Miele reportedly emphasized that it’s important to acknowledge when the company has its misses, including Battlefield 2042.

One of the factors that Miele apparently mentioned was responsible for Battlefield 2042’s problems is the Frostbite Engine, which had to go under a massive update. This update reportedly sucked up 18 months of development time. “All new tech, it was basically a new engine,” the report quotes her as saying. “They went back. The Frostbite version they were on was so old they had to go back and update. So it was basically putting the game on a new engine.”

Miele also apparently spoke about the work-from-home environment as a result of COVID-19 that impacted the development cycle midway through. She reportedly said “Add up all of this new innovation, all of this ambition for the new project, and then you add a global pandemic halfway into the project, where the game teams had to work from home, we ended up with more new variables in development than we have ever experienced before.”

After the Battlefield beta last summer, players provided feedback on bugs and other areas of the game. While early impressions were positive, later mock reviews prior to launch revealed that the game had more bugs than expected.

However, the report says Miele claimed the surprise launch of Halo Infinite’s multiplayer was a turning point, which came a mere four days earlier than Battlefield 2042’s release on November 19. Compared to Halo Infinite, Battlefield 2042 wasn’t as “polished”, so EA reportedly believes players had a more favorable view of the former.

The Xfire report also states that Miele explained that player expectations have changed and it wasn’t the right choice to retain the company’s previous standards. Miele apparently admitted that EA didn’t go wide enough with different player segments and didn’t go deep enough with the game. The lack of features such as scoreboards and VOIP systems didn’t help either.

At the end of the call, it was reportedly mentioned that Battlefield’s development teams will be restructured and more streamlined.

The news surrounding Battlefield 2042 hasn’t been great. EA already expressed that the game didn’t meet their expectations, and both its scoreboard system and season one content have been delayed. Even players have signed a petition to get refunds.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey