Battlefield Is Dead: When Skill Became Secondary to Spending

After watching EA seemingly destroy what made Battlefield special and turn BF6 further and further into a Call of Duty-style game, the chances of this becoming the Battlefield that longtime fans wanted seem to be dying by the day.

The lack of Oceania servers for Ranked RedSec has also completely undermined competitive gameplay for players in this region. Being forced to compete on US servers with 150+ ping means Oceania players are starting with a significant disadvantage before the match even begins. When you're trying to compete at the highest level, that kind of latency matters.

Then there’s the ridiculous cost of staying competitive. We’re now at a point where a high-end gaming GPU can cost at least $6,000, on top of the cost of the game, Battlefield Pro and the growing number of microtransactions. At what point does competitive gaming stop being about skill and start becoming about who can afford the most expensive hardware and who is willing to spend the most money?

If someone can spend thousands of dollars on hardware, subscriptions and additional purchases just to gain every possible advantage, while another player has genuine skill but doesn't have the money to keep up, it raises a serious question about what competitive gaming is supposed to represent.

Skill should be the deciding factor, not the size of your bank account.

Sadly, BF6 feels like it is moving further away from that philosophy. Just look at the player base. Despite the enormous amount of money that has been poured into the game, many of the hardcore Battlefield players from the old days have already moved on to other titles. Some came back briefly to see what BF6 had to offer, only to leave again.

And now, with the reported $55 billion acquisition of EA by Saudi Arabia, it feels even more like the Battlefield franchise is becoming about monetisation, corporate interests and extracting as much money from players as possible rather than delivering the skill-based, competitive military experience that made Battlefield legendary.

As someone who has been playing Battlefield since Battlefield 1942 on PC, this is genuinely disappointing.

I remember when Battlefield was about large-scale warfare, teamwork, tactics, vehicles and individual skill. You bought the game and competed on a relatively level playing field. Your performance was supposed to come down to how good you were, not how much money you could spend.

BF6 has lost sight of that.

For longtime Battlefield fans, that's probably the most disappointing part of all. The franchise that once stood for something unique is increasingly looking like just another monetised shooter fighting for the same audience as Call of Duty.