In early February, EA finally launched Battlefield 3: Aftershock in the App Store with nary a mumble of hype. The reason for the silence was likely because Aftershock was a buggy, barebones, borderline-unplayable mess. This poor effort was extremely puzzling too, not just because Battlefield is a flagship IP for EA and one of the biggest brands currently around, but because we had seen previews of Battlefield 3: Aftershock at various points for the better part of the past year and saw a very different title with lots of promise.
The version that released didn’t have any of the single player campaign stuff we had previously seen, and consisted of a single online multiplayer mode on 1 map, with just 4 weapons to choose from. It was free to download, but came with unremovable ads as well as heavy branding for the recently released movie Act of Valor. To top it all off, the online matchmaking – basically the single thing the game was supposed to be able to do – was barely functional.
Gamers were not silent about their feelings towards Battlefield 3: Aftershock across the web and in iTunes reviews, and just a couple of weeks following release EA pulled the game from the App Store to “re-evaluate" it. The verdict of that re-evaluation is in, as The Verge has learned that EA has decided to drop development for Aftershock and put those resources towards other projects. EA released this statement to The Verge:
“In the interest of bringing consumers only the highest level of quality mobile entertainment, EA Mobile has decided to suspend development and support of Battlefield 3: Aftershock and refocus its resources on other titles. The Aftershock servers will be live through March 31st, 2012, and customers who have already downloaded the game can continue to play until then."
Since the game was free, and there was no way to spend money in the game, the only thing gamers who downloaded the title have lost is time. Granted, with all the dropped games and long connection times that can add up to a lot of time, but at least no money is involved. If you were “lucky" enough to snag Battlefield 3: Aftershock while you could, then you have the next month to enjoy staring at the match connection screen until the servers breathe their last breath, and I really hope EA puts this behind them and brings their best effort the next time they attempt to bring Battlefield to iOS.
[Via The Verge]
