EA doles out free Battlefield 6 battle passes and XP boosts to players locked out on launch day by the EA App: 'We wanted to offer an apology… with perks'

Battlefield 6 ui redesigns: A close-up shot of a soldier wearing full headgear turning to look at the camera while holding their gun up.

(Image credit: EA)

As reported by Eurogamer, EA has not only resolved the glitches with its first party app that were keeping players out of Battlefield 6 on launch day, the publisher is also offering free season passes and other goodies to affected players as a mea culpa.

"Today, we experienced an outage on the EA app that prevented some of our players who pre-ordered Battlefield 6 from accessing the game," EA wrote in a message shared to X (formerly Twitter). "We know this can be frustrating so we wanted to offer an apology… with perks."

Affected players should have already received 24 in-game experience boosts to use at their discretion. Down the line, they'll also get free access to Battlefield 6's Season One battle pass, while ones who got the premium "Phantom" edition of the game will get Season Two's battle pass for free as well.

Battlefield 6 actually had a pretty clean launch as far as these things go, boasting good PC performance and login queues that, while sizable, filtered in quickly. The EA App's wonkiness was a major exception to that: Players were getting error messages in-game that they were "missing" necessary content or had to "purchase to play," even though Battlefield 6 was already in their libraries.

No less a figure than the head of Battlefield at EA, Vince Zampella, was advising affected players to just refund the game and buy it on Steam. I wasn't caught in this particular fiasco, but as the home of much of BioWare's catalogue (even if purchased on Steam), the EA App's general poor user experience has vexed me time and again⁠—it makes me miss Origin, EA's original (and similarly unpopular) proprietary launcher.

But battle passes and XP boosts strike me as fair enough recompense for those who didn't heed Zampella's advice and stuck it out on the EA App. Aside from this boondoggle and a seemingly middling campaign (but who plays Battlefield for the campaign?) it's looking like good vibes, warm feelings, and strong sales for Battlefield 6. In his review in progress, PC Gamer staff writer Morgan Park called it "the return to form this series needed."

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.

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