Last year, EA and DICE released what might qualify as the single most broken product at launch in the history of video games- Battlefield 4. A game that was so broken that it still isn’t completely fixed, more than seven months out from launch. A game that made single- or multi-player progress impossible, a game clearly rushed to meet sales targets. A game that EA insisted was completely okay and fundamentally sound even as they issued weekly updates to try and fix the damn thing.
Yes, that game. Just over half a year later (and a little while off from the release of the next Battlefield game), EA has come out and apologized for the Battlefield 4 launch, stating it was unacceptable.
“Think about what Battlefield 4 was,” EA boss Andrew Wilson said to Eurogamer in an interview. “64 player multiplayer, giant maps, 1080p, Levolution that was changing the gameplay design in an emergent way. There is a chance there are things you are going to miss through the development cycle. And you end up in a situation we had with Battlefield 4.
“For me, the situation we had was unacceptable. For the team it was unacceptable. We have worked tirelessly since then to make sure the gameplay experience got to where it absolutely should have been at launch and we’re focused on that and we continue to deliver value to that player base.”
Of course, if it was unacceptable, then that begs the question as to why you released a product that you clearly knew was broken. Is that how lowly you think of your customers?
The best part? EA isn’t even willing to promise this won’t happen again.
“But when you do things like that you can never guarantee. It would be disingenuous for me to sit here and say, ‘we will never have an issue again,’ because that would mean we were never going to push the boundaries again. And I don’t want to be that company. I want to be a company that pushes to lead and innovate and be creative. But you can start to do things that give you a better handle and a better view about what the potential challenges might be.”