DICE stops developing Hazard Zone mode

Battlefield 2042 was released in November 2021 and its release was described as disappointing by all parties, including Electronic Arts, critics and the public. Unlike BioWare with Anthem, DICE has received the support of the publisher to continue working on the game with the aim of tweaking and improving everything necessary to be able to launch the first season in early June. One of the most important decisions that the development team has made has been to abandon the Hazard Zone mode.

“All of us on the team had high expectations for this new Battlefield experience during development, but we’ll be the first to admit that it hasn’t found a suitable fit in Battlefield 2042 and that it’s best to focus our efforts on the modes that have been liked the most. ”, explains DICE. “Hazard Zone will still be part of the experience, we won’t be turning it off, but beyond addressing critical bugs we are no longer actively developing new experiences and content for this mode.”

DICE also advances that maps that are released throughout the seasons will not have Hazard Zone support. Featured as one of the three pillars of Battlefield 2042 alongside Portal and All-Out Warfare, this mode offers a PvE-PvP experience in which squads of four players must locate and retrieve data disks scattered around the battlefield. while fighting against other patrols with the same objective and invaders.

This isn’t the first change DICE has made to one of Battlefield 2042’s core modes. A recent update removed Breakthrough mode from its 128-player version. “Reviewing the experiences available in All-Out Warfare, we believe that the 128-player modes are more suitable for Conquest, where the playing spaces are larger and it is more natural to adapt to freer gameplay,” explains DICE. The studio is confident that a 64-player Breakthrough mode will offer a more tactical experience.

Since the launch of Battlefield 2042 and beyond the end of development of the Hazard Zone mode, DICE has focused on improving and revising four areas that it considers key: maps, modes, gameplay and new content. We will see if with all the changes applied so far and the launch of the first season scheduled for June, Battlefield 2042 manages to come back or falls into oblivion, where it already is for many.