Much like Battlefield Studios had done earlier this month with another one of the skins in Battlefield 6, the team of studios has now also silently removed the controversial Wicked Grin skin from the shooter. Genre-centric social media account Shooter Intel noticed the removal of the skin, as at the time of publishing, Battlefield Studios is yet to make any official statement or announcement about the matter.
The Wicked Grin skin had been the subject of several criticisms from the community of Battlefield 6, with many players noting that the saturated nature of the skin’s blue colour made it stand out quite a bit from the other, more realistically-coloured skins. Many also noted that Battlefield Studios had said that it would feature more realistic skins as part of the available cosmetics in Battlefield 6.
“So, weren’t we supposed to have realistic skins for some time? Something that someone would really wear during a war? Yet it seems that with the start of season 1, everything will turn to colorful mess, with no way of differentiating teams based on uniforms, the game will look more like a Paintball or ASG event. Colorful weapons with pictures, colorful camos with neon accents, weird mix of things that are supposed to look cool, but end up simply weird,” wrote Reddit user Ohforfk on the Battlefield subreddit just last week in a thread that has since been locked.
Earlier this week, Battlefield Studios had taken a similar step with another skin – System Override – which was also criticised for being an overly-green colour that reminded players of cans of Monster Energy. While System Override wasn’t removed from Battlefield 6 entirely, the developers had instead toned down on its use of the colour green. This move was seen celebrated by fans of the game, with some proclaiming that “They’re listening”.
In light of the recent removal of the Wicked Grin skin, some have taken to further criticise the skin having existed in Battlefield 6 to begin with. Social media user Christian Arrington, for instance, noted that Battlefield Studios could have adapted skins based on uniforms of real-world special forces units like SEALs and GIGN, among others rather than creating original skins with garish colour schemes.
“It’s simply not a good skin,” noted Arrington. “You have special forces units like the SEALs, Rangers, GIGN, SAS, Spetznas or even classic BF3/BF4 skins etc. they can build from that stick to the ‘grounded’ feeling they promised themselves. If they didn’t promise it. It wouldn’t matter.”
Interestingly, the Call of Duty franchise has also been subject to similar criticisms in recent times, especially with some of the skins that were released for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Things got bad enough that developers Raven Software and Treyarch announced that these skins and Operators wouldn’t carry over into the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.
“We know there’s been a lot of conversation recently about the identity of Call of Duty,” acknowledged Raven Software and Treyarch. “Some of you have said we’ve drifted from what made Call of Duty unique in the first place: immersive, intense, visceral and in many ways grounded. That feedback hits home, and we take it seriously. We hear you.”
Battlefield 6, in the meantime, is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review. Also check out details about the shooter’s recently-launched Season 1.
