developer DICE now says it’s not sure whether it will be able to “deliver” the series’ traditional Rental Server Program (RSP) for the latest game in the franchise.
Further Reading
Both and offered players the opportunity to host customizable multiplayer gameplay servers by renting server time from publisher Electronic Arts or third-party providers directly.
DICE made a brief mention of server rentals for back in September, but only to confirm that the feature wouldn’t be ready for the game’s November launch.
In the months since then, players have been holding out hope that the RSP was still in the works as a post-launch addition to the game. But in a Reddit thread posted earlier this week, DICE Community Manager Dan Mitre said, “You haven’t seen an update in our direction with RSP because we haven’t made a full decision internally whether or not we can deliver it.”
He expanded on the difficulties surrounding the Rent-a-Server rollout this time around:
RSP needs to meet standards and your expectations with the tools we provide—that takes development resources. It also needs to make economical development sense —we can’t introduce a feature that ends up costing more to keep maintained than it returns (I know that statement will open up more debate, and I encourage that, but this is the reality of the situation).
In other words, we don’t want to impact development resources of main game Quality of Life commitment and upcoming content by routing team bandwidth to RSP development. There’s also financial implications here that go well beyond my remit. Let’s tackle the former before we tackle the latter.
Mitre’s talk of recouping costs and “financial implications” is of particular interest considering that ‘s sales have reportedly been well below expectations. The game saw deep retail discounts just one month after launch and suffered a severe dip in retail sales in the UK compared to . It’s quite possible, given Mitre’s statement, that there’s just not enough of a player base to make an RSP program profitable for .
Further Reading
That said, Mitre was quick to emphasize that such an RSP is not completely off the table for . “Our teams need to weigh this carefully and either commit fully to the service or not provide it at all—and you need an official statement on what that decision is once it’s been made.”
While you wait for that announcement, if you’re looking instead to play some classic games on player-run servers, here’s a reminder that EA isn’t allowing that either these days.
