In another knock for Battlefield, Marcus Lehto has reportedly left the very studio he founded to lead the shooter franchise.
Earlier this week, various social media users noticed that Lehto had seemingly scrubbed all mention of Battlefield and EA from his Twitter bio, leading some to suspect that he was no longer with Ridgeline Games. VGC has since been able to verify that a post was shared to Lehto’s Facebook account this weekend where he confirmed that he has left EA, though no reason was provided as to why this might be the case. Lehto, co-creator of the Halo series during his time at Bungie, was a founder of Ridgeline Games, a studio setup under EA specifically to work on the Battlefield series.
At the time of its announcement, Lehto said that it “is a great honor to have the opportunity to collaborate with DICE and Ripple Effect and lead the charge on expanding the narrative, storytelling, and character development opportunities in the Battlefield series.” Last February it was announced that another team was being set up just to support Ridgeline in its development of a single-player campaign of Battlefield. With Lehto seemingly having left EA, the status of Ridgeline’s Battlefield game is obviously a bit in the air, but there doesn’t currently seem to be any kind of indication that it has been cancelled.
Last September it was also announced that Need for Speed developer Criterion Games would also be working on Battlefield once again, joining DICE, Ripple Effect, and Ridgeline. We’ve not really heard much about any of the projects these studios are working on, though in January it was reported that the Battlefield that’s expected to release this year will include a much-loved series feature everyone misses.
Battlefield 2042 never quite managed to find the audience it needed when it launched, with EA having to do a lot of work to bring back things like classes that a lot of players wanted in the first place. Believe it or not, the game is actually getting a new season next month too, despite its years of struggles.