Skip to main content

Battlefield 4 dev says it’s sorry with a month of free stuff

Battlefield 4 didn’t exactly … work when it came out at the tail end of 2013. In truth, the game was a disaster. Some people considered themselves lucky just to be able to join matches, but any positivity was washed away in a torrent of corrupted saves, server attacks, work stoppages, connectivity issues, and even a shareholder lawsuit. The real shame here is that DICE actually crafted a stellar game in Battlefield 4, it’s just hard to recognize when you’re constantly staring at an error screen.

Well, most of those issues have now been addressed and DICE wants to thank fans for their patience with a full month’s worth of free content. February 2014 is officially “Battlefield 4 Player Appreciation Month,” a 28-day period during which DICE will shower players with extra stuff as a thank you for buying the game on what amounts to pre-ordering the game at full price. Karl Magnus Troedsson, the studio’s general manager, runs through what goodies you can expect in a new Battlefield Blog post.

Recommended Videos

Every day you fire up the game in February, you’ll receive a free Bronze (on weekdays) or Silver (on weekends) Battlepack, an in-game booster kit that contains various weapon attachments, camos, XP boosts, and the like. You’ll also get two free shortcut bundles, to open up all unlocks in the pistol and grenade categories. You won’t have to take this if you’d rather unlock everything the hard way, but these shortcut bundles are typically sold as DLC for players that don’t want to grind through the multiplayer progression. Premium subscribers aren’t forgotten either; in addition to pistols and grenades, BF4 Premium users also have the option of nabbing free DMR and shotgun shortcut bundles.

On top of all that, there’s going to be a double XP weekend during February, plus a second double XP weekend for Premium subscribers. Here’s a handy protip: save any XP boosts you get from your free Battlepacks and use them during the double XP period. Bonuses stack, so you can effectively quadruple your XP gains if you’re smart about it. DICE will also be hosting a number of community missions – the first of which involves hitting a community target for dogtags collected (via melee kills) – with Gold Battlepacks as the reward, as well as developer talks, which will give players a chance to ask questions about the game.

There’s less clarity at the moment on how these community missions and developer talks will work, but we should be hearing more soon. Battlefield 4 is easy to poke fun at after the rocky launch, but it really is an outstanding game when it’s working right. If not for the post-launch issues, it would have been an absolute frontrunner for the best shooter of 2013. 

Adam Rosenberg
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…
Skate to finally launch into early access 5 years after it was announced
Two people on skateboards about to go into a tunnel at the top of a church.

After years of waiting, Electronic Arts announced that its new Skate game is hitting early access in 2025.

The official Skate account on X (formerly Twitter) revealed the news on Tuesday, saying that the team is "incredibly stoked" about the early access release, and that there will be more news over the next few months.

Read more
Project Rene isn’t going to be a proper The Sims 5
Two Sims standing in front of a blue background. One is gifting a present to the other.

Electronic Arts just made a game-changing revelation: Project Rene, long thought to be The Sims 5, won't be a linear sequel to the wildly successful and long-running The Sims 4. The publisher is moving away from sequential releases and will focus instead on expanding the franchise to other games, genres, and platforms.

In a blog post published Tuesday, EA said Project Rene development is "focused on building ways for friends to meet, connect, and share while playing together in an all-new world." This could imply that EA Maxis is testing multiplayer for the first time since The Sims Online, an MMO from 2002 that never reached the heights of its competitors. It also announced that an invite-only, multiplayer-based playtest will be happening this fall through The Sims Labs program.

Read more
The next Battlefield will take inspiration from some of the series’ best games
Soldiers standing behind turret guns in Battlefield 4.

Players got their first look at the new Battlefield on Monday, along with a bit of information on what's to come.

In an interview with IGN, head and founder of Respawn Vince Zampella revealed that the next Battlefield was inspired by Battlefield 3 and 4 -- specifically in terms of its setting. Zampella told IGN that it'll be set in modern times, as opposed to the most recent game in the franchise, Battlefield 2042.
"I mean, if you look back to the peak or the pinnacle of Battlefield, it's that Battlefield 3 ... Battlefield 4 era where everything was modern. And I think we have to get back to the core of what Battlefield is and do that amazingly well, and then we'll see where it goes from there. But I think for me, it's that peak of Battlefield-ness is in that Battlefield 3 and 4 days. So I think it's nostalgic for players, for me, for the teams even. Those are kind of the heyday ... although I would say 1942 also."
You can see a very small bit of this in concept art shared with IGN. It's not much, but there is a ton smoke and flames surrounding what looks like a European city. There are some helicopters deep in the background, along with some ships, suggesting that helicopter and ship warfare will return.

Read more