Battlefield 2042 lead dev leaves after “blatantly unfinished” launch and terrible reviews
EAFawzi Mesmar, head of design at DICE, is leaving the company following the release of Battlefield 2042’s botched launch.
Fawzi Mesmar has served as head of design at DICE since 2019, working on projects such as Battlefield 2042, Battlefield V, and Star Wars Battlefront 2. In an email sent to DICE staff this week (via VGC), Mesmar revealed he will be leaving the company on November 26, 2021. The email claims that Mesmar was planning on leaving the company once Battlefield 2042 shipped, meaning the game’s botched release is not part of his motivation.
Battlefield 2042’s release has been plagued by technical issues; this has led to the company scrambling to patch them in an attempt to salvage the launch. Mesmar’s departure follows a day after DICE releases a huge patch, intended to fix many of Battlefield 2042’s various bugs and problems.
Electronic ArtsMesmar’s email to Battlefield devs
Fawzi Mesmar’s email reads, “It was an absolute pleasure to serve on the best design teams in the galaxy. The incredible design work that you do continues to inspire me every day. Thank you for putting some faith in me, I hope I didn’t disappoint.”
“I have been made an offer I couldn’t refuse at another company that has been kind enough to wait for me until we have shipped. It was super important to me to be here with the team as we achieve this historical milestone.”
“While Oskar [Gabrielson, DICE GM] and myself have been discussing my succession plans for some time – and it will be announced in due course – we opted to delay this communication till after launch to keep the focus – rightfully so – on the game we’ve been putting a monumental amount of effort on.”
Battlefield 2042 has been plagued by bugs at launchBattlefield 2042’s release issues
The game currently has the worst user score of the year in Steam’s rankings with one reviewer saying, “Give this game 2 years to fix itself but by then you’d already forgotten this game existed and would have spent money on something actually deserving of your time.” Another described the game as “blatantly unfinished.”
- Read More: Battlefield 2042 review
Many players will be hoping the latest patch turns this around. 2042’s launch may have been rocky, but the second major patch arrives today, November 25. It aims to tackle many of the problems that have been reported. You can read the full patch notes here.