DICE Head Rips EA App And Says Get Battlefield 6 On Steam Instead

Battlefield 6 is out, if you haven't heard. Capitalizing on gamer dissatisfaction with recent Call of Duty releases, the new Battlefield title offers a tightly-optimized military shooting experience that many are calling a return to form for the series—even if it is a bit safe and unambitious in some ways. The launch isn't completely without its problems, though; notably, many users trying to get the game from EA's own app have struggled to do so.

What to do? Refund your EA App purchase and buy it on Steam, according to the head of Battlefield developer DICE and all around legendary shooty game man Vince Zampella. That's exactly what he said to a frustrated fan on Xwitter who complained of being unable to play the game "nearly 5 hours post launch" yesterday:


The specific issue is that when trying to join multiplayer from the version of the game on the EA App, a message pops up stating that "MULTIPLAYER is not installed on your system." It then advises players to "Reinstall to begin playing." Of course, the multiplayer component absolutely is installed, and the issue appears to be related to server-side license assignment.


On the one hand, it's kind of incredible that EA's own app is so incompetently implemented that one of EA's top guys is advising people to refund the game and buy it from a different store. On the other hand, Battlefield 6 has been more popular than anyone expected, and the huge load from the launch may have caused problems on the back end of EA's services. One would think the company would have prepared and load-tested for this exact circumstance, but anyone who has worked in a company of that size would understand the organizational challenges therein.

A fair question is why so many people were using the EA App. The answer is a little complicated. For one thing, players who played the beta had to use the EA App to do so. Players who subscribe to the EA Play service also got a discount on the game thru the EA App, and if you bought EA Play Pro for $17/month, you could in theory play the game immediately on day 1. Also, players who bought the game from the Epic Game Store or other resellers, like Best Buy, got redirected to the EA App—but the Steam version of the game only requires an EA account, not the EA App itself.

If you suffered this issue, you've probably already resolved it by now, but if not, do exactly as Zampella said: refund your copy of the game, and then go buy it on Steam where it actually works.