Battlefield 2042’s seventh season, going on now, will be the game’s last. While the online shooter will continue to receive some support, EA and Dice are looking forward to what’s next. To help build that future, Motive Studio—the team behind the Dead Space remake—will join the franchise and work on future games in the series.
When it launched in late 2021, Battlefield 2042 was not in a great state. In fact, it was a pretty shoddy, content-light, unstable mess. But over two years later and following numerous updates, tweaks, and seasons, the massive online FPS is pretty good! 2042’s seventh season—Turning Point—launched on March 19 and added new weapons, a new map, a fresh battle pass, and more. But according to a post from EA, this is the end of the road for 2042.
In a post on April 9, Battlefield general manager Bryan Breede confirmed that season seven was the end of 2042. While the game’s servers won’t be shutting down, the shooter won’t receive any new large content updates in the future. Instead, 2042 will get smaller updates focusing on keeping the game running. In the new post, Breede explained that while this might be “disappointing” for fans, it was time for Dice and EA to “shift our resources and focus” on “what comes next.”
“As I’ve mentioned in previous updates,” said Breede, “we have an ambitious vision to embrace and unlock the vast potential of the series’ class-based squadplay and immersive, intense battles.”
To help EA achieve that “ambitious” future, Breede confirmed on Tuesday that Dead Space remake and Star Wars Squadrons developer Motive Studio are going to build a team that will focus exclusively on Battlefield. Motive Studio general manager Patrick Klaus confirmed the news and provided a bit more detail in a separate post on the company’s site.
“The directors who delivered our Dead Space remake in 2023, Philippe Ducharme (executive producer) and Roman Campos-Oriola (creative director), will build a team at Motive to work alongside the Battlefield studios around the world creating what’s next for Battlefield– a universe across both multiplayer and single-player experiences,” said Klaus. “Their proven expertise in storytelling, immersive battles, and developing on the Frostbite engine uniquely positions them to help advance the vision for Battlefield, led by Vince Zampella (EVP, group GM of Respawn and Battlefield) and Byron Beede (SVP, GM Battlefield).”
Klaus also clarified that Motive wasn’t just focused on Battlefield. The studio is continuing to work on the development of its upcoming Iron Man game, with the general manager claiming the team has made “excellent progress” this year and hit a “major internal milestone” on the project.
“Iron Man is an important priority for Motive,” said Klaus. “And I’m very proud of the work we’ve accomplished so far.”
Motive joins other EA studios—Criterion, DICE, and Ripple Effect—in supporting and building out the publisher’s massively popular Battlefield series. This is a similar strategy employed by Activision with its even-more-popular Call of Duty franchise, which has basically every studio and team under Activision working on it. However, EA seems—at least for now—committed to making sure that it doesn’t just become the Battlefield company, unlike how Activision has practically been devoured from the inside by its popular FPS series.
No dates or specific details on the next Battlefield game were revealed in either post from Motive or EA, but it does seem like the publisher has big plans for the series. The question is, will it be able to pull them off and avoid a train wreck launch like 2042 suffered through? And will it be able to do that while supporting other franchises and teams? Time will tell.
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