Battlefield defeats the cheaters

 Don't be sad. Sometimes it just works out this way!

So what's up with Battlefield 2042 today? You know, I have to say it's not exactly fun to be going around talking smack about Battlefield in my household, especially when my dad is an addict to one of the earlier games and would love to talk your ear off about how he's the number 70-something in the entire world on the leaderboards. (Yes, that is actually true. I wish I had that sort of dedication to even a single one of the games I play.) As such it becomes difficult to find a receptive ear to dog on Battlefield to, even with the total dogs dinner that DICE and EA made of the latest release. So I'm going to change my tune. I'm sure there's something more positive I can talk about regarding this game and I just need to find it. Hmm... what about the fact that they've finally managed to curb the number of cheaters that frequent their game! That's a good one... oh wait, now I know what they mean by the phrase 'double-edged sword'.

A recent update from one of those cheat engine provider groups is making headlines for an achingly sad reason if you happen to be someone who likes the Battlefield games. (Guilty) I don't know how exactly it is that cheat engine providers can be brazen enough to have easily accessible forum posts detailing their activities without being sued into oblivion; but this is the world we live in. (Minor copyright complaints are much more important, I'm sure.) And what was this post? Why, it was a declaration of defeat! Huzzah! An 'Industry insider' by the name of Tom Henderson, who has some posts on Dualshockers, recently tweeted out an image from a discord chat apparently detailing a cheat-mod provider who is declaring the discontinuation of Battlefield 2042 mods from their subscription store. Key stated issues: the actual performance of the game is hindering the cheat menu and the lack of people actually using the cheats is low as people are leaving this game like a sinking ship.

Now I'm only somewhat sure that this is legit, Tom Henderson seems to be real enough but the Discord image is lacking some important context and the person making this update doesn't even appear to be a moderator or admin on their own channels, or at least doesn't sport the telltale flairs. (I mean, I don't know Discord etiquette but that seems kinda odd. Unless the whole stigma surrounding 'discord admins' has grown so bad people are avoiding the tag like the plague, which seems plausible.) But assuming this is true and not just a creative way to dog-pile on Battlefields' downwards spiral, then doesn't that just make for a perfect summary of the 'mission failed successfully' meme? I mean heck, nobody likes bottom-feeding wastrels like cheaters clogging up the game lobby, polluting the airwaves of society, so their exodus is welcome for sure; but what a backhanded way to make them exit.

I mean it makes sense: what we've got here is a Battlefield game that quite obviously was slapped together in record time after a drastic change in direction ended up ruining the vast majority of preproduction and early development work. Either that or the Battlefield creators have discovered a fetish for being humiliated. (I hear that's a thing, you never know.) The fact the thing crashes, is full of bugs, lags on most last gen consoles; it's fair to say that a wall-see-through hack might become useless with sufficient slowdown, or an autoaim bot. And if I were a pathetic waste of muscle tissue who was sad enough to actually spend some money on cheats and mods, I might be pretty peeved at the payoff. If you think about it, this is more of the cheaters protecting themselves from the potential vitriol of their customers. And let that be a lesson to all people; association with DICE and EA will bite you; stop giving them money for it.

It's all been a bit of nightmare on DICE's end, with this little bittersweet cherry on the cake just hammering that home. Somewhere in the depths of their mind I'm sure some higher-up 'currently hiding under their desk' sat there and genuinely thought this disaster game would just float by and out the door with only the usual amount of disappointment; but the gaming community is feeling spicy with this one. People have just started to get over Cyberpunk 2077 and they need a new head to scalp; Battlefield was just at the right place at the wrong time. (And with the wrong amount of effective development hours spent on the project.) Things are so bad that people are actively watching, and constantly updating everyone on, the slow decline of Battlefield 2042's player base as it lags behind Battlefield V on bad days and is slowly sinking to maybe even fall under Battlefield 1. Which is a travesty; Battlefield 1 is actually a sick game, it should be higher than both of those games by right.

Of course, as these situations usually go, it's the development team who are feeling this worse than anyone else. Certainly worse than the managers who devised this disaster game to come out at the tippy top of Q4 so that everyone would abscond on holiday and the devastated community who just essentially got ding-dong-ditched by their favourite war game franchise will stand around in bemusement at the pile of cow dung in the place of their promised 'gamechanger'. Fleeting tweets have whipped around here and there of staff feeling frustrated about the work which went essentially nowhere as well as the weight of the disappointment falling on their shoulders for all they've done. It's a sad cycle, and one with no heroes and muddy morals. But if there's one thing for sure; it's that none of us would want to be in DICE's shoes right now. Well- actually I imagine having a salary is nice; maybe it would be worth the heavy vitriol...

The worst part, at least from my perspective, is how deep the damage is; this isn't one of those ugly-duckling stories like we look for from similar disaster artistry. Just like with Cyberpunk 2077, the flaws with this game are deep and intrinsic, and beyond the help of patches and bandaids on the gaping maw of a wound which is this title's missing facial cavities. The theory I subscribe to is that this title was very clearly shaped up to be a Battle Royale, built and poised to cater to overly large maps, no squad functions, and an insufferably cheeky-chipper attitude to it's characters; thus the shell left when all of that was randomly pulled is probably such a tangled mess of orphaned code strings and nowhere system triggers, now in an active game, that it'll be an absolute miracle if all that can get cleaned up and smoothed over in the next year. Pairing in scoreboards, squads and good writing is far too much to ask for ontop of all that. (Too much of a 'legacy feature'.)

But do I feel bad for DICE? Why would I- they've won the dream and are rocking a cheater-light ecosystem now! But seriously, the struggling slimmer of humanity left inside me roils at what could have been and vibrates with the pain of those on the development team who truly gave their all; whilst the cold exterior which makes up the rest of my being sees only a million dollar company be upset that they've not printed another hundred million for their shoddy work. As I said, muddy and murky morals running around right now. It just sucks that, given the nature that DICE unfortunately established for themselves, it's going to be several years of waiting until we can put this mess behind us and start preparing to be disappointed by the next Battlefield title. God, what a strange dance modern gaming has become.