The headline might feel a bit “too much” but I think it’s sadly just the truth. EA and DICE revealed last month that Battlefield 5 will not receive any more significant content updates after the Summer patch hits. This means that, while the developers will keep supporting the title with weekly rewards and activities, there are no more gigantic updates such as the addition of important Second World War armies that are still missing.

This is important, as the Tides of War system was billed as a way for players to follow the events of WW2, starting from the Fall of France, and hopefully ending with the final defeat of the Nazi Reich. This lofty aim will forever remain out of our reach after last month’s news though, as the Soviet Union will never join this virtual war, and one would assume that the US will be perpetually bogged down in the war in the Pacific (unless they join up with the British for a fight with virtual Rommel in Africa). The discontinuation of the Tides of War element of the game leads to a state where the Nazis are in power, as the current theaters of war are still in occupied territory, and far away from Berlin. I understand that sometimes a developer must move on from a game that underperformed, but shouldn’t Russia get its moment to shine in the virtual battlefields of this war that took so many lives from us? Shouldn’t France get to shine as the Allies retake the lands lost in 1940?

At the end of the day, EA/DICE have shown us again that they didn’t really care for the hidden stories of the war, or respecting the heroes of the past. The moment the game started underperforming, they ended support, leaving this virtual world in shambles, with only a single-player War Story showing any indication of the Allies winning the war. Just as they did with Battlefield 1, which left the French and Russian armies for last, when they suffered the brunt of the fighting during the Great War, now EA/DICE are also burying so many known and unknown theaters of the Second World War under the virtual dust of live service shutdowns. Is that OK? I don’t think so, but it’s definitely a sign of the times.