"... if it's not already there."
Revenue and player count declines have been substantial for several seasons now. Substantial enough that Andrew Wilson mentions it in earnings calls with shareholders. "Apex net bookings down... expectations not met... blah blah blah." They keep talking about Apex 2.0, but what they describe sounds like less change than we got in this one single new season, and there's never any mention of cheating. Because, I guess, if you don't talk about it then it doesn't exist? And on top of all that, 2.0 is still close to two years away because you can't have it interfere with the launch of the new Battlefield.
And that's what this all keeps coming back to: EA has the new Battlefield on deck and that game needs to be successful, plain and simple. You can't spend that much money on a title and have it fail if you want to maintain your business. Just ask 343 studios. Never mind that the goals EA has set for new players is completely unrealistic. Never mind that cheat makers are probably already selling cheats for a game that doesn't even launch officially for another two months. And biggest of all, never mind that EA already has one of the big three battle royale shooters on the market. No, let's just let that game fade into oblivion in the desperate hope that we can bring in 100,000,000 players for BF6. Sure, EA. Sure. This is what happens when leadership stops wanting to hear the truth from people, especially their own employees, and only wants to hear what they want to hear.
Then again, maybe BF6 will launch bug-free, unlike Apex. Maybe it will have high-functioning matchmaking designed to retain casual players instead of drive them away like Apex. Maybe it will have some incredibly powerful AI-driven anti-cheat that sets a new industry standard. Which Apex obviously never had and probably never will have. Maybe I'll switch over to Battlefield because of all the newer, better, fairer features. And maybe monkeys will fly out my butt.