IGN gave Battlefield 2042 a 7. The player count dropped 90% in three months.

Let's begin with the financial infrastructure. Electronic Arts is one of IGN's largest advertising partners, funding homepage takeovers, exclusive gameplay reveals, and sponsored video integrations across every major EA release cycle. The Battlefield 2042 review published on embargo day alongside banner ads for the very same game. Journalism.

Now let's examine the 7/10. This score was assigned to a game that shipped without a scoreboard. Without voice chat. Without a server browser. Without basic features that had been standard in the franchise for fifteen years. The review acknowledges 'bugs and issues' in a single paragraph, then dedicates three paragraphs to explaining how the tornado weather system is 'spectacular.' That's not a review. That's a weather report sponsored by EA.

The data is unforgiving. Battlefield 2042 launched to over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam. Within ninety days, that number had cratered below 2,000 — a 98% decline that would make a cryptocurrency blush. EA offered refunds. DICE was restructured. The planned four-season live service roadmap was quietly gutted. Yet IGN's 7/10 sits permanently on the game's Metacritic page, forever inflating an aggregate score that EA executives cite in quarterly earnings calls.

Here's the pattern that the math reveals: IGN's average score for EA flagship titles over the past decade is 7.6. Their average score for indie titles without advertising partnerships is 6.2. That's not a difference of editorial opinion — that's a 1.4-point premium that correlates perfectly with the advertising calendar. Every EA review publishes on embargo day, every score lands safely between 7 and 8, and every piece of genuine criticism gets buried under three paragraphs of praise for weather effects.

The scoreboard that Battlefield 2042 shipped without? IGN has one — it just measures ad impressions instead of kills. Sponsored by the truth.