Following the disappointing performance of DICE’s most recent Battlefield entry, 2021’s Battlefield 2042, publisher Electronic Arts (EA) is doubling down on its flagship Xbox, Windows PC, and PlayStation FPS. The next Battlefield title — codenamed Glacier, and colloquially referred to as Battlefield 6 — is reportedly the most ambitious one yet, and is being designed to compete directly with much larger properties like Call of Duty and Fortnite. Changes to the development process that facilitated, however, have resulted in a significant amount of stress and struggle for its developers.

This comes from a recent Ars Technica report, with numerous current and former EA employees speaking with the outlet about Battlefield 6’s development. Traditionally, Battlefield has largely been developed by DICE, with other EA studios providing support when necessary. With the new game, though, EA conceptualized a Battlefield with a free-to-play battle royale mode, a single-player campaign, the series’ traditional combined arms-focused multiplayer, and the return of 2042’s wacky sandbox experience Portal — something to rival the biggest names in the industry, with extensive help from other teams and new leadership brought in to help DICE achieve it.

With former Call of Duty and Destiny manager Byron Beede and Vince Zampella of Call of Duty and Titanfall fame brought on to oversee the series, and Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto hired to lead a new team called Ridgeline Games as it worked on the single-player campaign, development began. To say EA’s ambitions were lofty is an understatement; the firm aimed for an extremely high 100 million players over the course of Battlefield 6’s lifetime, and prepared to invest over $400 million in the game.

“Obviously, Battlefield has never achieved those numbers before,” said one EA developer. “It’s important to understand that over about that same period, 2042 has only gotten 22 million,” commented another. According to an employee, the most successful Battlefield ever, 2016’s Battlefield 1, achieved “maybe 30 million plus.”

Battlefield 1 is the most successful Battlefield game to date, but at a lifetime player count of 30 million, it hasn’t even achieved a third of what EA is aiming for with Battlefield 6. (Image credit: Electronic Arts)

In early 2024, though, Ridgeline Games fell apart, with EA ultimately closing the developer after two years of development due to dissatisfaction with its work. Sources told Ars Technica that proper check-ins weren’t in place to adequately gauge progress, and that Ridgeline’s teams were seemingly expected to achieve the impossible task of working as efficiently as more established studios while simultaneously building itself from the ground up.

The creation of Battlefield 6’s campaign then fell to DICE, Criterion Games (Need for Speed), and Motive Studio (Dead Space remake), but “there was essentially nothing left that Ridgeline had spent two years working on that they could pick up on and build,” and so the mode’s development had to completely restart. This led to ballooning costs, and as of Spring 2025, it’s the only mode that didn’t reach an alpha state.

Another issue is the impact of cultural differences between US and European teams working on the game, with the Swedish, Stockholm-based developers at DICE wanting “to achieve the greatest in terms of the game experience” while US leadership pushes “financial expectations in order to be as profitable as possible.” That conflict has led to major development complications that weren’t an issue with previous titles DICE had primary creative control over.

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But with rigid deadlines to keep, the studios have continued pushing forward — though many devs believe aspects of Battlefield 6 have entered production prematurely as a result. “If you don’t have those things [prototypes] fleshed out when you’re leaving pre-pro[duction], you’re just going to be playing catch-up the entire time you’re in production,” said one employee.

Motive Studio, the developer responsible for 2023’s Dead Space remake, is one of many studios now contributing to Battlefield 6. (Image credit: EA)

As a result of this, many working on the game expect some features may need to be cut or delayed significantly from the final product. One developer also asserted that “without an enormous patch on day one or early access to the game, it’s unrealistic that they’re going to be able to release” a single-player campaign that does “what they needed it to do.”

But more importantly, it’s as a consequence of all of this — sky-high performance expectations, the campaign’s slow progress, dysfunctional inter-studio collaboration, and rushed steps forward — that Battlefield 6’s developers are going through “extraordinary stress and long hours,” with many forced to take weeks and even months of leave to stave off burnout. And while EA has made an effort to support its team members, several feel it’s been ineffective.

“There’s like—I would hesitate to count—but a large number compared to other projects I’ve been on who have taken mental exhaustion leave here. Some as short as two weeks to a month, some as long as eight months and nine,” said one developer.

“I sought some, I guess, mental help inside of EA. From HR or within that organization of some sort, just to be able to express it—the difficulties that I experienced personally or from coworkers on the development team that had experienced this, you know, that had lived through that,” explained another. “And the nature of that is there’s nobody to listen. They pretend to listen, but nobody ultimately listens. Very few changes are made on the back of it.”

The human cost of overambition

Larian Studios head and Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke famously said publishers should “build more slowly,” focusing on quality and developer health over constantly maximizing profit and “squeezing out the last drop.” (Image credit: Larian Studios)

If there’s one thing that’s clear from this report, it’s that EA — infatuated with the idea of Battlefield being as successful as huge franchises like Call of Duty and Fortnite — is trying to brute force the creation of the ultimate Battlefield experience without taking the necessary time and steps to ensure it’s built in a sustainable and healthy way.

Simply throwing manpower and money at the project isn’t going to solve fundamental issues like disagreements and poor communication across studios, nor will it establish processes that make sure Battlefield 6 is a stable product for players. Above all else, though, it’s not a solution for the exhausting and oppressive “crunch” workloads that poor management creates.

Indeed, the human cost of Battlefield 6’s development woes that’s been described here is terrible, and it has me worried for all the people at DICE and other studios that are working on the game. If EA truly cares about its employees, than the publisher needs to buckle down and address the core problems here.

That might mean scaling certain things back or coming to terms with slower growth over time instead of rapid popularity and sales, and most certainly means working to make existing processes more efficient and allowing for more time when it’s needed. But ultimately? It has to happen. This kind of development simply isn’t sustainable — and people are suffering as a result of its adoption.