DICE’s military shooter Battlefield 2042 has endured a difficult life in the short time since its release in late 2021.
Suffering from low player numbers compared to its predecessor, Battlefield V, as it struggled to carve out a unique identity, the game has arguably been waiting for a shake-up to get it back on the right track.
Now it seems as though DICE is doing just that, having announced that it will be “winding down” development of the game’s Hazard Zone mode ahead of its upcoming season one.
Battlefield 2042 Curtailing Future Hazard Zone Development
The news came via a development update video featuring Battlefield 2042 Creative Director Lars Gustavsson and Senior Producer Ryan McArthur, accompanied by a blog post further detailing the changes.
“All of us on the team had great ambition and high hopes for this new Battlefield experience throughout our development,” said DICE in the blog post, “but we’re the first to hold our hands up and acknowledge that it hasn’t found the right home in Battlefield 2042 and that we’ll benefit greatly from letting our focus and energy stay on the modes we see you engaging most with.”
In the video, which you can check out in full below, Gustavsson adds: “We haven’t gained the traction we wanted with this mode, you can still find it in the mode selection screen, but for the maps that are coming in the seasons, we won’t put it as a focus”.
Instead, the focus looks to be switching to the All Out Warfare mode, with Hazard Zone not in line for anything “beyond addressing critical errors and odd behaviours that may appear in the future”.
The incoming updates will also see a raft of other changes, many of which are based on player feedback, with one example of this being the changes to specialists, with McArthur emphasising to players “we’ve heard you” with regards to issues like immersion-breaking voice lines.
Among the other changes are a swath of map updates, many of which will be designed for 64 player games as opposed to the 128 player matches that were touted around launch, with DICE attempting to “unshackle” itself from rigidly sticking to this number
Make sure to follow us for more Battlefield 2042 updates as season one draws closer.