Daily Briefing: Wednesday 24th November

DICE outline upcoming Battlefield 2042 patches

Battlefield 2042's recent launch hasn't gone too well, with players across the internet banding together to carefully catalogue the game's many, many, many issues. The newest release for one of EA's flagship franchises quickly became one of the worst-reviewed games ever on Steam, amassing nearly 40,000 negative reviews in the space of just one week. Things haven't been going great, in other words, but there may be hope on the horizon as developers DICE have outlined a number of updates coming to possibly rescue the game from itself.

• In a new damage control post published to the game's official website, EA DICE confirmed that a new title update will launch on Thanksgiving Day with another following shortly afterward in early December. The studio outlined "teams across the globe are working 24/7 to evolve and deliver improvements to the game" and will be communicating any changes and new content coming to Battlefield 2042. The game did actually get a title update just before launch but it did little to stem the flow of core gameplay issues like aiming and hit detection. Maybe these upcoming updates will do more to steady the ship.

Epic Games acquire Harmonix

Even in an industry as acquisition-happy as gaming, this one is pretty surprising. Harmonix were founded in 1995 and went on to become known for series like Rock Band and Dance Central, as well as individual releases like last year's Fuser. Harmonix built their musical name on music games, funnily enough, which is why it initially didn't make a huge amount of sense that they'd been acquired by Epic Games of all people.

• However, shortly after news of the acquisition broke Harmonix took to the internet to confirm that the plan is for the studio to "work with Epic to create musical journeys and gameplay for Fortnite." Though Harmonix also emphasised that they will continue to support existing titles and that all their games will remain available on Steam and consoles, so there shouldn't be be the same kind of massive exclusivity wave we've seen in other Epic titles like Rocket League. An Epic statement outlines that “as we work to build the metaverse, [Harmonix's] expertise is needed to reimagine how music is experienced, created and distributed.” It's interesting and Fortnite has already shown that it loves some music, but what a waste of the people who created Rockband.

BioWare have lost another senior creative

In an internal email sent to staff earlier this week, BioWare studio general manager Gary McKay confirmed that Matt Goldman has departed the studio after "mutually [agreeing] to part ways." Goldman joined BioWare in 1998 and worked as an artist across games like Baldur's Gate and Jade Empire. He worked on the first few Dragon Age games before taking a few years out to work on Halo Wars over at Ensemble, before returning to BioWare in 2017 as senior creative director on the newly-rebooted Dragon Age 4.

• Not a huge amount as been said about Goldman's departure in general, and even less has been said about why he left. Neither BioWare nor parent EA's statements seem particularly concerned about enlightening staff and the public beyond reassurances that he leaves Dragon Age 4 "in excellent hands." Gary McKay's email to staff reads "we understand that Matt’s departure has an impact on you, as well as the game’s development. Rest assured our commitment to a high-quality Dragon Age game has not wavered, and we will not ship a game that is not up to BioWare’s standards."