The fiasco continues for Battlefield 2042, which is facing a massive flight of players. For Electronic Arts, to rectify the situation promises to be very compromised.
My brother-in-law has (already) stopped playing Battlefield 2042, he told me this weekend during a visit. Like many others, he had high hopes for Electronic Arts’ latest online shooter, available since November 2021. But, like so many others, he soon dropped the deal due to the state the game is in — despite huge promises.
A quick tour of the SteamCharts site proves how Battlefield 2042 no longer interested many people in January 2022, only two months after its launch. After having known a significant peak of players in November (more than 100,000 users connected at the same time), the FPS plunged into anonymity. Over the past 30 days, on average (as of January 17), it has failed to bring together more than 13,000 people simultaneously. The fall is all the harder, knowing that Battlefield V, its predecessor, remains around 10,000 aficionados.
Battlefield 2042 will become a drag on Electronic Arts
The disinterest in Battlefield 2042 is huge and can be explained by the many bugs that continue to annoy players. ” Never seen a game so badly finished “, is still surprised LudoR1200 in his Steam opinion shared on January 16. On Valve’s platform, the blockbuster stacks “rather negative” ratings on a sample of nearly 90,000 feedback. On Metacritic, it has to contend with a rating of 2.1 out of 10.
All of this criticism and disappointment caused Steam to bend its refund policies squarely, as evidenced by a token of thanks shared on Reddit on January 9. Thus, a player was able to recover his money when he no longer met the criteria (” Steam Money Back Offer applies to games and software from the Steam Store purchased within 14 days and with less than 2 hours of use », stipulates the policy in place). This kind of exception has already been observed in the past, for example for Cyberpunk 2077.
Even sites that offer cheat tools no longer want to support Battlefield 2042 — an indication that the desertion is more than real. ” We will remove cheat tools from Battlefield 2042. All current subscriptions will work normally, but we will no longer be able to subscribe (…). The reasons behind this decision have to do with the performance of the game affecting cheating and the fact that the game is dying “, reads in a screenshot of this tweet shared on January 13.
Electronic Arts and Dice quickly reacted to the very negative reviews, promising several updates to correct the situation. But everything leads us to believe that the damage has already been done and that the ambient impatience has already cost its essential status to Battlefield 2042. For the American publisher, the FPS could quickly become a drag, as was the case for Anthem few years ago.