A troubled beta and overwhelmingly negative response from fans at launch were just the beginning of Battlefield 2042’s woes. Despite reportedly selling 4.23 million units in its first week, this included refunds and trial players so the actual number of sales is apparently lower. Insider Tom Henderson, who first reported the sales numbers, said in a new tweet that publisher Electronic Arts is “very disappointed” in the game’s performance thus far.
Currently, it’s ‘”looking at all the options” when it comes to the title’ which includes looking at free-to-play “in some capacity.” More details will be provided tomorrow. The news is hardly surprising especially given rumors of troubled development behind the scenes.
As such, EA had previously announced a shift towards a multi-studio development approach with DICE GM Oskar Gabrielson departing and Respawn Entertainment’s Vince Zampella becoming the boss of the overall franchise. So there’s plenty of internal change that’s already happening.
As for the current state of Battlefield 2042 though, DICE recently released update 3.2 which adds numerous bug fixes and Portal XP changes. It’s also working on update 3.3 which releases in mid to late February and will add the first iteration of the refreshed Scoreboard. This is only the first phase though as the developer will further iterate on the same in the coming days.