If you want to play Battlefield 2042, you’ll now have to wait an additional month to do it. Electronic Arts had previously targeted an October 22 release date for its highly anticipated multiplayer shooter. However, due to pandemic-related difficulties, the game will now launch on November 19. That’s not too long of a wait, admittedly, but it does mean that Battlefield 2042 and Call of Duty: Vanguard will now launch in the same month. Shooter fans: Choose wisely.
Information comes from the official Battlefield Twitter account, which shared the news at 4:05 PM on September 15:
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An update from the Battlefield team pic.twitter.com/K53VNM2tTzSeptember 15, 2021
“We’ve made the decision to shift the launch of Battlefield 2042,” reads a statement from Oskar Gabrielson, the general manager at Battlefield developer DICE. “The game will now be released worldwide on November 19th, 2021.”
If you’ve been following game delays over the past year-and-a-half — and there have been a lot — the culprit shouldn’t surprise you. Many of Battlefield 2042’s developers are working from home due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This has apparently made in-person collaboration difficult, and slowed down the development process.
“With the ongoing conditions not allowing [a return to the office] to happen safely, and with all the hard work the teams are doing from home, we feel it is important to take the extra time to deliver on the vision of Battlefield 2042 for our players,” Gabrielson continues.
He concludes the post by promising more updates about Battlefield 2042’s open beta later this month.
Fan response to the post had been predictably mixed, with some fans lamenting the delay, and others encouraging the developers to take the time they need. Either way, though, the bottom line is clear: Battlefield 2042 will launch just about a month after its previous release date, but the open beta still seems to be on track.
Battlefield 2042 is by no means the only game to deal with delays this year. It happened to Horizon Forbidden West; it happened to Gran Turismo 7; it even happened to Deathloop, although that game is now finally out. The fact is that the global pandemic threw an incredible monkey wrench into game production, and we’ll probably deal with the aftereffects for at least another year or two.
Assuming that Call of Duty: Vanguard stays on track for a November 5 release, Battlefield 2042’s new release date means that both of the popular multiplayer shooters will launch in the same month. “Call of Duty vs. Battlefield” is sometimes a worthwhile argument — and sometimes just an incredible morass of bad-faith trolling. We’ll see which is the case this time around.
