It seems EA are ripping off Battlefield Play4Free users. A little time ago, EA implemented an update to the game which enabled players to customize their weapons. You could customize your weapons by buying upgrades too, and obviously, paying gave you the edge. EA also introduced “Legacy” weapon attachments, and a lot of users paid to buy these. These attachments, it turned out, made the weapons far too powerful, and brought about a lot of imbalance.

Seeing now that they have made a mistake, EA decided to to take this update down, and all Legacy attachments have been removed from BP4F. So all users who paid for Legacy updates basically wasted their money. Of course, they’ll be paid back in some form, and will be given what the devs are calling “+3” weapons, which have improved stats and are more powerful than standard weapons.

However, these weapons have been stripped of all attachments, and those players who had customized their weapons to their liking using attachments will now have to buy new ones from a new catalog. So basically, EA is asking players to pay for something that they’re already pay for. Say, if you increased your ammo capacity using attachments, you will have to do that again now, since all Legacy updates have been removed.

Here is what EA said:

Existing owners of “Elite” and “Veteran” weapons (a.k.a “Legacy” attachment owners) will still get something in return, as we will replace your existing base weapons with new, unique, “+3” versions. These “+3” weapons are more powerful versions of the current base weapons with slightly increased stats and can still be upgraded with the full catalogue of customization items.

People have been complaining on on BP4F’s official forums. On this specific thread, after 146 pages and over 3000 posts of complaints, EA has not yet responded. Players have been sending Tweets, Facebook queries and e-mails to them too, but they haven’t got any replies yet.

This is a really strange move by EA. Those +3 guns need to be really good, or else the backlash against the decision will only grow.

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Thanks to our reader Jay Fowler for tipping us.

Battlefield PLay4Free was launched today and here is it’s accompanying trailer. On the game EA say: “Battlefield Play4Free delivers an endlessly entertaining experience on the PC that combines the most popular maps from Battlefield 2 with the popular classes and powerful weapons of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, all rendered with stunning visuals. Battlefield Play4Free raises the bar in the free-to-play space even further with 16 different vehicles including the Mil Mi-28 attack helicopter, its nemesis the F35 VTOL jet fighter, the massive Russian T-90 main battle tank, and the hard to catch LSV light strike vehicle.”

Thanks to CVG for the info.

Cousin’s also added that the future of gaming will be “platform agnostic” and based on “free games with deep multiplayer experiences.” Easy Studios are the creators of Battlefield Heroes and Battlefield Play4Free.

Battlefield Heroes is a fun game online that’s free, but we need something a little more serious and realistic.  Now EA has announced a free Battlefield game to play on the PC for free, looking much like a combination between Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 2 which EA even admits with it including maps, classes and weapons from the 2 games. EA calls their free title a “deep PC shooter featuring signature Battlefield vehicular warfare, sandbox gameplay, and intense 32-player online battles”. Sounds good to me, especially with a price tag of nothing on it, you have to love that.  Battlefield Play4Free will be available for the PC only obviously in Spring 2011.