Explosively popular indie Battlefield-alike BattleBit Remastered draws a line in the sand against boomsticks: 'no shotguns'

First spotted by PCGamesN, one of BattleBit Remastered's developers stated in no uncertain terms that the breakout FPS will not be adding shotguns. In response to a query about the FPS staple, co-developer ThatLiquidHorse simply stated "no shotguns."

Alright, fair enough, but why? Every FPS game and its dog has a shotgun in it. This seems to be a fairly regular question faced by the BattleBit team, and as Prima Games reports, the primary issue seems to be a question of balance. "Shotguns in games have the ability to either be too powerful, or underpowered," BattleBit Discord moderator TrueDevil™ told a fan. "As you mentioned, balancing is very hard on them, therefore, the Devs have decided not to add them."

That judgment really does have the uncomfortable ring of truth: you're either high on the hog dual wielding one-shot kill Winchesters in the OG Modern Warfare 2, or just kind of annoying enemies with what might as well be blasts of hot air⁠—I was never a fan of TF2's take on the weapon, for example. Back in my Destiny days, there was a particularly ugly meta centered around a boomstick called Fellwinter's Lie that completely upended PvP for a hot minute.

It doesn't help that videogame shotguns never really behave like real life ones: shotguns are effective to a surprisingly long range compared to their digital brethren, but also real-life rifles aren't quite the pew-pew damage-limited plinkers of videogame land. But that's the thing, isn't it: videogames are way more fun than real life, and having shotguns be some kind of high risk, high reward scattergun that can out-damage a high caliber rifle is fun.

BattleBit's based around large, open maps, but I could easily imagine some little gremlin loading in with a pump action and camping a building or other enclosed space for easy kills. The BattleBit team simply decided to head that possibility off, and fair enough.

I do take issue with PCGN's contention that shotguns are "the best weapon in FPS games." The best weapon in FPS games is assuredly the Magnum or "Deagle."