EA Blames Halo Infinite For Bad Reviews

In a company-wide “town hall” meeting, the execs outlined why Battlefield failed. And as if EA couldn't get any worse, now they're blaming competitors.

BF2042 Blames Halo
Yeah, this is all Halo's fault... | © Microsoft / EA

EA's reputation among the community is at a record low. Battlefield 2042 has overtaken Cyberpunk 2077 as the worst let-down in gaming history, and apetition for the game to be fully refunded has become one of the biggest in change.org's history. Right now, EA need to admit that their marketing was fraudulent, and they should have delayed the game. But that's never going to happen with a corporation like EA. Instead, they've taken the easy route – blame Halo.

EA Explain Why Battlefield 2042 Failed

In a company-wide “Town Hall” meeting, EA execs described to their teams why they felt BF2042 had failed, they blamed an outdated engine, the pandemic, and the surprise release of Halo Infinite. The first two make complete sense; the outdated engine caused so many of the bugs, and the pandemic obviously made those issues harder to fix. But blaming Halo Infinite? What a bad excuse. Amazing games can come out side-by-side without hurting each other, look at some of the best years in gaming history. Halo 3, CoD 4 and Assassin's Creed 1 were all released within a 49-day window.

Details of the company meeting were leaked to insider Tom Henderson, in his report the execs allegedly claimed the following:

Battlefield 2042's launch and patches meant "the game was stable" and "the early critical reception was good". However, according to EA, things took a turn, and that turn was, clears throat,​ the surprise release of Halo: Infinite multiplayer [...] the comparison between both games was not favourable because Halo Infinite was a very polished title whereas Battlefield 2042 contained bugs and wasn't as polished

This is disappointing for any Battlefield fan to see. EA needs to take full accountability if they ever hope to persuade the community that they're capable of making decent games again. And by decent games, we don't mean the Battlefield x Overwatch battle Royale nonsense they're planning…

Jon Ramuz

Jon has a BA and an MA in English Literature, and as Content Lead for EarlyGame has written over 1,500 articles. He focuses on shooters, but also writes about entertainment and gaming in general....