Battlefield 2042 players say season 1 is too little too late

Battlefield 2042
(Image credit: EA)

Battlefield 2042 season 1 has finally launched, but players are near-unanimous in their disappointment for the new content, or apparent lack thereof. 

The long-awaited and delayed release of Battlefield 2042 season 1, titled Zero Hour, launches this Thursday, June 9, and adds a new specialist, a new map, a new operation, stealth helicopters, the game's first battle pass, and more. Considering this is the first major content drop some seven months after the game launched, most of the Battlefield community seems to think it's too little, too late.

"Zero Hour needs rebranding to Zero Content," reads a tweet from journalist Tom Henderson with more than 6,000 likes and 300 retweets. "Love how they set themselves up so perfectly for Zero Hour to be memed as Zero Content," Redditor PainOfClarity wrote. "Zero Hour? More like Zero Hours played," obliged Meme_Dependant.

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And so on. One of the top posts on the Battlefield 2042 subreddit compares Zero Hour's relatively limited offerings to Battlefield 1's first DLC drop, which included a new French Army faction, four new multiplayer maps, two new operations, a new game mode, a new player class, and a bunch more. Most of the frustration with Battlefield 2042's first expansion seems to be around the fact that there's only one new map. There's also a pretty, ahem, spirited discussion taking place about whether the live-service model is to blame or if the same problems would plague a more traditional paid DLC post-launch update structure.

While obviously not an ideal reaction for any developer, the backlash to this week's update is especially striking when you recall DICE saying season 1 was aimed at "restoring the trust that many of you feel was hurt when we launched back in November of last year."

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Jordan Gerblick

After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer, I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.