EA is scrambling to do damage control after an industry insider said Battlefield 2042 has been relegated to a "skeleton crew" to focus on the series' next installment.
Jeff Grubb spilled the Battlefield 2042 beans on his Giant Bomb show Grubbsnax. According to Grubb, the game has been left with a barebones dev team who've been tasked with churning out the promised seasonal content as quickly and cheaply as possible.
But EA has weighed in to say that's definitely not the case. Meanwhile, the Battlefield Season 1 content is dropping today with a single map, a new gun, one specialist, and two helicopters. Which has left fans' feathers decidedly ruffled – just check out posts on the subreddit.
"This game is basically down to a skeleton crew," said Grubb (via VGC). "It’s down to like the bare bones and those people are specifically just working on the promised additional seasons that the game needs to meet the requirements of the high-end version that it sold."
Grubb colorfully describes the current state of development as “abandon ship time”. He adds that "the skeleton crew is working to pump that stuff out the fastest and the cheapest it possibly can.”
On GrubbSnax today, I said that Battlefield is down to a skeleton crew that is trying to meet its DLC obligations. EA has reached out to say this is untrue. pic.twitter.com/Wpj79d9pMMJune 8, 2022
Apparently, EA is already turning its focus to the next game in the Battlefield franchise, leaving this small team to handle all four seasons of live service content expected to drop throughout the year.
"They’re doing this to move everyone on to the new Battlefield as fast as possible. The real core crew of Battlefield developers are already working on [the next title].”
EA has responded to Grubb's claims, calling them "untrue" in a statement he shared on Twitter. The publisher says it has a "significant team across studios" beavering away on Battlefield 2042. The devs are reportedly working on "evolving and improving the Battlefield 2042 experience for all players."
If EA wants people to accept that line, we'd better see some timely and decent seasonal content launch soon. Because right now, the current content isn't doing a very convincing job on its own.
