Battlefield and rampant issues with hacking, name a more iconic duo. Surprisingly though, developer DICE managed to avoid it with Battlefield 2042. Not that it was really intentional of course, stemming from quite a few incidents in a perfect storm of accidental anti-cheat measures. There’s still an impact that cheating has on Battlefield 2042, but it’s a surprisingly smaller impact than when the game was originally released a few years ago.
The latest in the Battlefield series by DICE, Battlefield 2042 tried taking a more futuristic approach. Whereas previous games focused on older World War scenarios, this game takes it into the future relying on advanced weaponry. There are, as always in Battlefield games, an extensive variety of classes, weapons, and vehicles to play for every style of player. It’s one of the most diverse in the series’ history, which makes it even more of a shame that the game is somewhat dead. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t have a good player base still, but the Battlefield series has seen much better days.
It’s kind of the only option that Battlefield players have at the moment though, being the last release in the series. A major shakeup at DICE studios means that there’s a new game on the horizon, but it’s taking longer than it normally would. In the meantime, Battlefield 2042 maintains a consistent base of players, with a surprisingly fair community.
With previous Battlefield games, cheating was one hell of a problem. The anti-cheat system that EA uses has always been known as a fickle friend in even the best of times. It would often give players bans for doing absolutely nothing wrong while Aimbot players would spray entire lobbies in the game. The Battlefield One days were a harrowing time for online play, with many rampant cheaters even on console versions. Usually it would end up being Aimbots, but others had ESP hacks that gave them an advantage using a radar overlay for their screen.
Cheating was so bad throughout the Battlefield games that fans often resorted to petitioning the developers for better anti-cheat measures. Not that DICE ever did a whole lot about it, but that’s probably more on EA than them. Either way, it was a huge problem for the game. Worse, it was enabled by a lot of sites online that would sell hacks for the game, as either downloadable extensions or coding hacks. The problem grew widespread and nobody thought the genie could be put back in the bottle.
Upon announcing Battlefield 2042, the developers said that they were paying attention to the impact cheating has on their players. Promises of a new anti-cheat system were all over the place, with EA promising that this time they would get it right, for sure. Spoiler alert, they didn’t, but as it turns out EA themselves were the anti-cheat software all along. In putting out game after game with some of the worst anti-cheat software and most rampantly hacked player base, they alienated said player base to the point of losing sales for 2042.
Ironically enough, the actual anti-cheat software that they implemented with Battlefield 2042 is surprisingly decent. It does a good enough job that most players can’t really say that they’ve ever run into anyone cheating. If something is rare enough that most players don’t notice it, it must be doing one hell of a job. There is another reason for the lack of cheaters though, revolving mostly around the cheat availability.
Look, as a long-time Battlefield player, I can personally attest that Battlefield games have a pattern. They’ll establish a great reputation with a game like Battlefield 3 or One, then absolutely trash it with the next ones. After Battlefield One, the next game had some hype, only to instantly crush any of it with a release that only EA is capable of. Fans were pissed, with absolutely angry takes on just how broken the game was thanks to terrible measures against cheating.
Considering the butterfly effect of bad experiences with the previous game and the sheer cost of games, things got worse. Battlefield 2042 got virtually no hype, with many writing it off as generic like Call of Duty had already done with Black Ops 2 before. Sales numbers reflected the discontent, with 2042 being one of the lowest-selling entries in the series. With those low sales, came low demand for hacks in the game, and in turn that itself drove the amount of hacks made down.
By December of 2021, there was little to no cheating in Battlefield 2042. Thanks to the low sales numbers and even lower sustained player counts, only a month after the game was released most major modders abandoned it. As it turns out, this would be the death knell for cheating in the Battlefield community, doing more for the game than any software EA would even bother to think of. Before 2022 could even get going, DICE managed to take out their newest game in the series.
The good news is that people who come to Battlefield 2042 now don’t have to deal with much cheating. It also gave EA an even bigger sign that they need to get their crap together thanks to the stupid amount of microtransactions. Did we mention the microtransactions? Because EA never seems to learn that lesson, and it constantly diminishes their returns on new games. So, now that Battlefield is on a “creative break” with something new taking a long time to brew, changes may come.
That doesn’t mean that cheating is totally gone in the Battlefield series though. Assuming EA pulls their usual shenanigans, there will be a sizable amount of hacks when the newest finally launches. Until then, the Battlefield series still sees a massive amount of cheating in the previous titles like Battlefield 1 which still has online servers. Battlefield 2042 is still surprisingly cheater-free though, and has a mostly relaxed, though small, community for any players interested.
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