if it was october it was Q3
Under ASC 606 revenue is recognized as each performance obligation is completed for the customer, which may happen over a period. If a performance obligation is satisfied over time, revenue is recognized as it becomes enforceable against the customer even when the entire agreement is not complete.
I cannot recall the exact terms of those contracts that EA/DICE issued for their "Early Access Players" but it is correct that a software company is not allowed to recognize any revenue or pull the amount either until "the product" essentially has been delivered. So for the early access players, that will happen around when the early access download started for them. (note that EA in their SLA do not promise that you will be able to find any servers to play on either...)
@Psubond I expect that shareholders will get a more detailed review of the earnings report, so will look into this.
But think we will learn that the vast majority of the BF2042 revenue came in through pre-orders and then just from the first few days after launch. So at full price for aka Gold and Ultimate editions. After that, then other end users were for a large part leveraging their existing play testing passes to the various providers of these across the various platforms (PC, Xbox and PlayStation). As the initial reviews by the open market were not favorable then most of these did not convert as planned into real license sales afterwards for EA. The conversion rate has been near dead zero...
Likewise the expected revenue streams till end of Q4 from microtransactions, skins, etc are now all stalled until further...
