Electronic Arts has removed a substantial quantity of both their own and developer DICE’s servers from Battlefield 3. Instead, they’re pushing the servers which requires payment from players.
VentureBeat found that after the exclusion of a large amount of servers, there’s currently only 17 servers from publisher EA on the shooter’s PlayStation 3 version. DICE severs have been pulled altogether.
Privately rented servers have now populated the server selection list, which EA charges for; they’ve been leasing them out to players for $30 a month.
Community manager Daniel Matros said on the decision:
There is only so much physical space and digital space where you can have servers. The community requested [rental servers] and we delivered. Everything in the wonderful world of Battlefield is dynamic.
It was recently confirmed that Battlefield 3 shipped over 15 million units worldwide. Despite its massive commercial success, and indeed taking a noticeable market share from Call of Duty, EA’s reputation of unconventially squeezing money out from its consumers is still a common practice and it certainly speaks volumes for this situation in particular.
