EA Blames Halo Infinite for Battlefield 2042's Poor…

While it initially had a decent amount of hype behind it, Battlefield 2042 became one of the biggest disappointments of last year. The game released to mostly negative reviews from critics and has been outright rejected by even the most hardcore Battlefield fans, who have abandoned it to return to older titles like Battlefield 1 and Battlefield 5 instead. There are numerous reasons why people don't like Battlefield 2042, and it seems EA is pinning at least part of the blame on Halo Infinite.

In a report by Tom Henderson on Xfire detailing a recent "Town Hall" meeting call at EA, chief operating officer Laura Miele discussed various reasons why Battlefield 2042 flopped. One of the reasons Miele presented was the surprise launch of Halo Infinite multiplayer. Miele claimed that Battlefield 2042 was "stable" and that "early critical reception was good," according to the report, but that things took a turn when the game was being compared to Halo Infinite as Halo was more polished and didn't have nearly as many bugs.

Besides blaming Battlefield 2042's poor reception on Halo Infinite, Miele pointed to other reasons why the game has struggled. Miele pointed to the outdated Frostbite engine, which Henderson reports took 18 months of development time to prepare for Battlefield 2042. Miele also said that development problems stemming from employees working from home also stymied Battlefield 2042's potential.

Developing a triple-A video game during a pandemic is an unprecedented challenge, and it does make sense that Battlefield 2042 was being held back by its engine. However, some may take issue with EA trying to put the blame on Halo Infinite for being a more polished game and therefore taking some of the shine off Battlefield 2042. The argument could be made that EA should never have released Battlefield 2042 in its current state at all, as consumers should expect their $70 games to be polished at launch.

EA plans to continue supporting Battlefield 2042 for now, but it's hard to see how the game can rebound from this. Fans have started a petition demanding Battlefield 2042 refunds that has over 200,000 signatures at the time of this writing, and the game's player count continues to dwindle. It's possible EA could bring players back by making Battlefield 2042 free-to-play, but that would likely greatly upset those who paid money for the game at launch.

Battlefield 2042's Specialists and other things core to its gameplay seem like they would be very difficult to remove, yet they are some of the things that players take most issue with. Other poorly-received games have made miraculous comebacks over the years, so it's too early to count Battlefield 2042 out, but it has a significantly steep hill to climb for sure.

Battlefield 2042 is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.