EA is scrambling to do damage control after an industry insider said Battlefield 2042 has been relegated to a “skeleton team” to focus on the next installment in the series.
Jeff Grubb spilled the beans from Battlefield 2042 at his Giant Bomb Grubbsnax show. According to Grubb, the game was left with a core development team that was tasked with producing the promised seasonal content as quickly and cheaply as possible.
But EA weighed in to say that’s definitely not the case. Meanwhile, Battlefield Season 1 content is coming today with a single map, a new weapon, a specialist, and two helicopters. What made fans’ feathers decidedly ruffled – just check it out posts on the subreddit (opens in new tab).
“This game basically boils down to a minimal team,” Grubb said (via VGC (opens in new tab)). “It’s just like the basics, and these people are specifically working on the promised additional seasons that the game needs to meet the requirements of the high-end version it sold.”
Grubb colorfully describes the current state of development as “abandon ship time”. He adds that “the skeleton team is working to pump these things out as quickly and as cheaply as possible.”
In today’s GrubbSnax, I said that Battlefield is all about a reduced team that is trying to fulfill its DLC obligations. EA has reached out to say this is not true. pic.twitter.com/Wpj79d9pMMJune 8, 2022
Apparently, EA is already turning its focus to the next game in the Battlefield franchise, leaving this small team to handle all four seasons of live service content that are expected to drop throughout the year.
“They’re doing this to get everyone to the new Battlefield as quickly as possible. The real Battlefield dev team is already working [the next title].”
EA responded to Grubb’s claims, calling them “untrue” in a statement he shared on twitter (opens in new tab). The publisher says it has a “significant team across all studios” working on Battlefield 2042. The developers are working to “evolve and improve the Battlefield 2042 experience for all players”.
If EA wants people to take this line, we better see a decent and timely seasonal content release soon. Because right now, the current content isn’t doing a very convincing job on its own.
