Battlefield 6 lead defends RedSec performance, says what the battle royale can do at 30hz "beats most of the competition" like Warzone and Fortnite

We've been playing RedSec, which is Battlefield 6's battle royale mode, for less than a day, and people are already discussing how well it runs. Despite how it may seem, EA and DICE's new free-for-all is actually more efficient than the genre heavyweights, at least overall.

Yesterday, October 28, EA brought in RedSec, Battlefield 6's own 100-person skirmish with an ever-shrinking map. Putting out a battle royale in 2025 isn't easy, since you're competing with heavily established games like Call of Duty: Warzone, Fortnite, Apex Legends, and PUBG.

Players have been quick to scrutinize RedSec's makeup, prompting developers to respond to questions over their decision-making. "[RedSec is] 60hz for the final fight. If you make it there. Also, I'd argue our 30 beats most of the competition baselines too," David Sirland, lead producer on Battlefield, says on Twitter, responding to a flippant comment about the mode running on 30hz.

For a broad simplification, hertz refers to how well an online game runs, because you’re running through servers and such. A little digging shows Sirland has a point here. In 2021, EA confirmed Apex Legends starts at 20Hz, which is around where PUBG was running in 2018, per a dev letter. These games will have fluctuated and improved over the years, but it's important to keep in mind RedSec has just launched.

Such numbers for Fortnite are harder to reliably pull. A graph from FPS tracker TrueGameData has Warzone at 20-24Hz. They tend to sit around this amount because it's a sweet spot for smoothness when dealing with dozens upon dozens of players around the world playing on umpteen servers at any one time.

In the replies, another skeptical player asks why DICE can't replicated the performance of Battlefield 2042, to which Sirland points out we're talking about 100 players, admitting "there's more to do" but requesting comparisons be "apples to apples."

Battle royales are intense to maintain, and speeds can vary depending on what's happening, getting easier as the player count whittles down and movements become more refined. That DICE and Ripple Effect Studios have managed to push to 30Hz for the initial sprint of a round on Fort Lyndon is pretty remarkable - it just mightn't feel like that when you're sniped after making it to the final four.

Battlefield 6 players rain chaos by literally taking a sledgehammer to the game, devs respond with weapons-grade exploit hunting: "Yeah. It won't work anymore."