The current season of Battlefield 2042 will be its last. The 128-player shooter will continue to receive new events, challenges, and other updates, EA has announced, but the bulk of the Battlefield work happening from now on will be dedicated to producing the next game in the series—or possibly games, but that’s not quite clear yet.
Battlefield 2042 was famously loathed by many at launch, but after a big redesign campaign and multiple seasons, we declared last year that DICE had turned things around. (But we also sorta liked it from the start, as unpopular an opinion as it was.)
Four seasons were promised when Battlefield 2042 launched, and it made it to seven, all of which brought new guns, maps, and gadgets to the game for free. Now it’s time to “turn from the present to the future,” says Battlefield GM Byron Beede.
“We know this news may be disappointing,” wrote Beede in a blog post published Tuesday. “However, as we looked at what the future of the series required, it became clear it was time for us to shift our resources and focus to be fully dedicated to what comes next.”
What comes next isn’t entirely known: EA has been referring to it as a “Battlefield universe” with “connected” multiplayer and singleplayer experiences. Whether that turns out to be one big game or multiple games, EA has dedicated a lot of its development might toward the project.
Aside from DICE, teams at Criterion and Ripple Effect (formerly DICE LA) are working on the next Battlefield whatever-it-is, and EA announced today that the leads on Motive’s well-received Dead Space remake, Philippe Ducharme and Roman Campos-Oriola, will head up a new Battlefield team within the Montreal studio.
Motive is presumably working on the singleplayer portion of the incoming Battlefield universe, similar to its contributions on Star Wars Battlefront 2’s campaign in 2017. Ducharme and Campos-Oriola’s “proven expertise in storytelling, immersive battles and developing on the Frostbite engine uniquely positions them to help advance the vision for Battlefield,” said Motive GM Patrick Klaus, who also noted that another team at the studio continues to work on its Iron Man game.
In 2021, EA handed leadership of the Battlefield series to Respawn founder Vince Zampella, who continues to run the show. At the same time, a new Seattle studio was founded to work on a singleplayer Battlefield experience under the direction of Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto. That studio closed earlier this year, and although we don’t have details on what happened, we know that Lehto didn’t part with EA on good terms.
I’m curious to know what happened there, especially since it doesn’t seem like EA decided to pull back on Battlefield. It’s clearly still dedicating a lot of resources to the series.
“Battlefield 2042 has been an important chapter of the series we all know and love, and your feedback has been important in helping us build this game into something special while also assisting us in laying the foundation for the future,” Beede wrote in his blog post. “Battlefield is an experience that is defined by the passion of its community as much as its team-driven tactics and explosive battles, and I look forward to the day that we can tell you more about what’s coming next.”
I doubt that day will come super soon. On an investor call earlier this year, EA CFO Stuart Canfield said that a new Battlefield game isn’t in EA’s plans for its 2025 fiscal year. Granted, corporate calendars are weird: EA’s 2025 fiscal year has already started, and ends in March next year, so that doesn’t rule out a new Battlefield game in late 2025. But knowing how long it takes to make games these days, I’m not holding my breath.
