EA and DICE have confirmed their Battlefield 2042 Hazard Zone mode won’t receive any new content, just months after the game’s launch.
This news comes via the latest Battlefield Briefing in which the development team discuss the upcoming Battlefield 2042 Season 1 update and what changes the player community can expect.
Focusing their efforts on improving the core game experience and creating new content, DICE will effectively abandon Battlefield 2042 Hazard Zone though the mode will still be playable. Additionally, any major bugs and issues found within the game mode will be addressed in future updates. Here’s what the studio had to say about their decision:
We’re winding down future development on Hazard Zone. All of us on the team had great ambition and high hopes for this new Battlefield experience throughout our development, 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.
Hazard Zone will stay as part of the experience, we’re not switching it off, but beyond addressing critical errors and odd behaviours that may appear in the future, we’re no longer actively developing new experiences or content for the mode, and you’ll find that maps that we release across our seasons will not be supported in Hazard Zone.
With no single player campaign or co-op focused mode, Hazard Zone felt like a shoe-in, so EA could better justify Battlefield 2042’s full-price release. Aiming to provide a battle royale alternative without directly copying Fornite, PUBG, or Warzone, Hazard Zone had squads of four roaming large maps in search of downed satellites, scooping them up before heading to an extraction. While some enjoyed this experimental mode, it’s safe to assume that only a minority ever engaged with Hazard Zone, hence why DICE is ready to pull the trigger.
Who knows, with Season 1 on the horizon, Battlefield 2042 could be due for a comeback. Having ditched its 128-player Breakthrough mode, the shooting action can now be more focused, especially with some of the map tweaks being proposed. Interestingly, there are also plans to improve the game’s tone, updating Specialist appearances and voiceovers so they don’t appear as clean-faced and jovial.
In our Battlefield 2042 review we scored the game an underwhelming 6/10:
There’s a good game to be found within the Battlefield 2042 and fun to be had as the spectacle of Battlefield’s signature gameplay is taken to new, more expansive heights, but it’s marred by a handful of unsuccessful gameplay design changes, hurriedly implemented features and bugs at launch.
Source: EA
