EA cancels long-awaited release over Battlefield 2042's failure

EA has cancelled a long-awaited release of an upcoming game over Battlefield 2042’s failure.

Electronic Arts’ Battlefield series is truly an OG of the military first-person shooter, surpassing even the release of Call of Duty with its inception on PC way back in 2002. For the most part, the Battlefield series has put out bangers that are still played to this very day.

Take for example its first game, Battlefield 1942, which recently benefited from a community remaster. What’s more, you should have no trouble being paired in a competitive multiplayer match in 2013's Battlefield 4. However, for some, the series reached its pinnacle with the two Bad Company entries which were released in 2008 and 2010, respectively.

So it saddens fans to see the release of the most recent game, Battlefield 2042 flop on a massive scale. At launch there were server issues, missing features, bugs, glitches, you name it. Granted from what we hear, Battlefield 2042 is in a much better state now, but when you burn the masses on such a large scale, it’s very difficult for any franchise to recover.

In February 2023, along with Apex Legends Mobile, Electronic Arts announced that it was also cancelling the Battlefield Mobile. To add to the disappointment, Battlefield Mobile never even left its beta phase.

In a statement issued by EA at the time, it stated that the reason Battlefield Mobile was being cancelled, is so that it can shift all its focus to Battlefield 2042. Though, we’re not sure that was remotely enough to save the troubled game.

“As the industry has evolved and our strategy to create a deeply connected Battlefield ecosystem has taken shape, we decided to pivot from the current direction to best deliver on our vision for the franchise and to meet the expectations of our players,” said EA in the statement. “We remain highly committed to unlocking Battlefield’s enormous potential. We’re hard at work at evolving Battlefield 2042, and are in pre-production on our future Battlefield experiences at our studios across the globe.”

Furthermore, as reported by Dexterto, during a recent interview with Mobilegamer.biz, a Battlefield Mobile developer has spoken about the recently cancelled offering.

Alex Seropian, who was the lead developer on Battlefield Mobile, said that the negative community reception to Battlefield 2042 was a major contributing factor as to why the mobile game was canned.

“In the course of the last year, a few things happened. Battlefield 2042 came out and the community reaction to 2042 was not good. That cascaded a bunch of introspection,” said Seropian.

“Apple also changed the IDFA rules, and the long and short of it is that it’s made user acquisition a lot more expensive.” He added: “And then Apex Legends Mobile came out and I don’t know if EA has talked about why they cancelled it, whether it was economics or whatever, but without me saying, you could fill in the blanks, I guess.”

As for what the future may hold for the Battlefield series, only time will tell. In a recent story, EA announced that the series will return and when it does, it could be a huge departure from previous instalments. That being said, if there’s one thing we know for sure, we doubt that we’ll be getting another Battlefield mobile game anytime soon.