First Person Shooter (FPS) fans were excited when DICE announced it was creating the latest installment in the ever-popular Battlefield franchise: Battlefield 2042. The game launched on November 12, 2022, to much fanfare, but any positive feeling soon waned when players discovered the game was a complete mess.
Loyal Battlefield fans would have forgiven the lack of a single-player mode had DICE held up their end of the bargain and released the game it had promised. Instead, players received a sub-standard product that was essentially an Alpha release; it was that bad. Game-breaking bugs were rife, and deviating from the traditional Battlefield classes and using so-called specialists went down like a lead balloon. DICE even neglected to support VOIP in a game whose franchise has teamwork and communication at its core. Oh, and there was not even a scoreboard until a recent update.
A Continual Drop In Active Players
The promotional trailer had players heading to online sports betting sites to wager on Battlefield 2042 being crowned the Game of the Year. That will never happen because the game is almost dead six months after its terrible launch. Official figures from Steam show that 100,590 players played Battlefield 2042 at its peak shortly after launch. However, within a month, the number of peak players had fallen to 47,367, and the average number of players plummeted from 51,299.4 in November to only 20,075.2 in November, a drop of almost 61%.
The downward trend continued through to March, when a peak of a mere 3,241 and an average of 2,003.5 players were recorded. Compare that to the game’s predecessor, Battlefield V, which recorded a peak of 31,411 and an average of 11,044.9 players in March 2022, and you can see why people think Battlefield 2042 is dead in the water.
Matters grew worse in early April when Steam Charts showed only 931 players were playing Battlefield 2042 on Steam. Indeed, those figures are for PC users. Still, you would expect a similar reduction in players across consoles, mainly because Microsoft took the unprecedented step of issuing refunds to disgruntled customers.
What Went Wrong With Battlefield 2042?
DICE pushed back the release date from October 22 to November 19 (November 12 for Gold edition buyers), with the company citing impacts from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as the main reason. However, it was abundantly clear that the extra few weeks were nowhere near enough because the game is not even near the finished article today despite a handful of patches. DICE should have delayed the game for another six months, possibly more, and released the finished article. No doubt Electronic Arts had something to say about that.
Loyal Battlefield players love the franchise for its gritty realism mixed with some arcade moments. Look at the playable characters from previous Battlefield titles, which mostly represent soldiers from the game’s era. Furthermore, Battlefield traditionally has four or five-player classes for players to choose from. DICE did away with these classes and replaced them with specialists akin to the characters found in games like Apex Legends. These specialists are not in the Battlefield franchise’s spirit, but they also come out with cheesy one-liners and quips that become annoying after hearing them only once.
Then there is the fact it took DICE more than four months to give the game a much-needed leaderboard and an additional month to make VOIP possible. Let’s not even get started on the fact that Season 1’s battle pass still isn’t live despite tens of thousands of players buying it upfront. Unfortunately, these additions, which should have been available at launch, have come at a time when hardly anyone plays the game regularly. Will the players that left return? It is implausible, especially as a petition to force refunds received more than 200,000 signatures. There are many potential players you have to convince to come back when you have shown very little progress in improving your product. RIP Battlefield 2042.
