The Battlefield 6 Paradox: How EA is Slowly Killing its Best-Seller

4 hours ago 1

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Published Mar 9, 2026, 8:21 PM EDT

Jaime Tugayev is the News Editor for DualShockers with over a decade of experience, and a much longer love for fantasy, shooters and strategy games.

Another day, another studio hit by layoffs. This time, the reaper came for Battlefield 6, taking out members from the multitude of experienced teams that make up Battlefield Studios. It always sucks when talented people lose their jobs, but the circumstances around the Battlefield 6 layoffs seem much more confusing.

We are talking about the best-selling game of 2025 in the United States, and the first time in recent history that a Battlefield game comprehensively trounced Call of Duty in popularity. Once again, game devs are faced with the reality that whether your game is a massive hit or flops, the outcome is the same.

Battlefield 6 Twists The Knife With Free Weekend Right After Call of Duty Launch

On the other hand, behind the impressive sales numbers, there are structural problems within Battlefield 6 that its leadership has failed to address in a timely manner. None of this justifies laying off the developers, but there might be method to the madness in trying to shake things up before Battlefield 6 hits the point of no return.

Just One More Patch

Back in August last year, Battlefield 6 ran an open beta period that set the marketing blueprint for other shooters like ARC Raiders and Marathon. It was clear to anyone who played it that the core gameplay was there, but it also needed a serious rebalance paired with larger maps to feel like Battlefield proper.

By the time of the game's release, those concerns had not been properly addressed, but the atmosphere of collective optimism was intoxicating. Sure, it needs better maps and the TTK is out of whack, but Battlefield is back! It's a live service game anyway, so they can just fix it on the fly.

Behind the impressive sales numbers, there are structural problems within Battlefield 6 that its leadership has failed to address in a timely manner.

I'm guilty of that myself. In my review of Battlefield 6, I gleefully gave it a 9/10 score. I maintain that this is a game that does a lot of things right, and perhaps if the game had just focused on refining the base offering instead of trying to pile on new content, we might not be having this conversation here.

Alas, while the launch of Battlefield 6 was ideal, very little has gone the game's way in its quest for live service stardom, and those struggles seem to have been enough for EA to take the axe to some positions in the structure.

Battlefield 6 Leadership: Big Teams, Huge Inertia

A lot of the issues with Battlefield 6 revolve around doing too little, too late. Take the game's battle royale mode, for example. REDSEC came out in late October, but for reasons beyond anyone's understanding, you could only play as a duo or squad.

The obvious solution here would have been to rush to implement a solo mode, which Battlefield Studios eventually did... last week. By the time the solos queue entered public testing, REDSEC was all but dead, despite being the most mechanically refined battle royale shooter, and for free at that.

This same pattern has repeated itself with maps, operator skins, and other seasonal content: Battlefield 6 eventually gets it right, but the studio's institutional inertia clearly keeps improvements from making it to the game in any reasonable timeline.

EA is right to try to bring back the spark, but in classic corporate fashion, it misses the forest for the trees.

The layoffs affecting the studios in Battlefield 6's orbit are primarily targeting developers who have proven more than capable of delivering exceptional work. Meanwhile, the leadership responsible for the delays and poor initial decision-making will come out on the other end unscathed, ready to make the same mistakes but with a marginally smaller team under their control.

As Battlefield 6 stumbles blindly towards the precipice, at least we know Call of Duty can be defeated. I just wish the victory had left us with a triumphant winner instead of two different losers.