After the Battlefield 2042 disaster, EA and DICE absolutely must save their cult license. But things seem to be off to a bad start with this latest news.
Even if Battlefield 2042 saw a significant resurgence of interest on Steam, and its biggest peak of simultaneous players in October 2023, the bellows has generally subsided. The servers are still not empty, but the feeling of failure has not been completely erased. And this is surely why Electronic Arts is being very cautious about the release of “BF7”. It will perhaps be available in 2025 or 2026, but nothing is certain, even less after the twists and turns within one of the studios in charge of the franchise.
It smells bad for the next Battlefield 7 game
Battlefield 2042 is not dead and will even receive a season 7 next March. Enough to further fuel the title to try to make up for the sinking of the launch as much as possible. And what’s next? At least one new game that is announced as the start of a “reimagining a truly connected ecosystem”. It’s vague, very vague. But with this approach, EA hopes to be able to “bringing Battlefield back in an entirely new way in the future”. An ambitious program which will perhaps take a hit with two discoveries.
Two Internet users, GhostGamingG and DannyOnPC, noticed that Marcus Lehto, co-creator of Halo, had discreetly announced “having left EA”. A departure which is also reflected on his LinkedIn profile. And this is not news to be taken lightly since the developer, who returned to the industry with Disintegration, had been propelled to the head of the new EA studio Ridgeline Games. With the help of DICE, Marcus Lehto was supposed to boost the cult license, with a Battlefield single-player campaign better than the previous ones, as narrative director.
“It is a great honor to have the opportunity to collaborate with DICE as well as Ripple Effect and to be responsible for expanding what is possible in terms of storytelling, story and character development in the Battlefield series » said Lehto in 2022. Two years later, it is therefore already the end, even if he has not yet commented on the information.
In January 2024, co-founder and art director Chris Matthews left Ridgeline Games for 343 Industries (Halo Infinite). Two essential vacant positions about to be replaced? Maybe not. On the site, there are no job offers available, which is surprising. Has there been any internal recruitment or is the studio already preparing to close its doors? We do not know yet. But the loss of such important elements greatly questions the current state and future of Battlefield 7, and it doesn’t really smell good.