Battlefield 6 might have officially gotten its free-to-play battle royale game mode – Battlefield: RedSec – but the launch hasn’t quite been received as positively as EA and Battlefield Studios would like. As caught by IGN, the battle royale mode’s launch on Steam was hampered by negative player reviews, taking the aggregate rating down to “Mostly Negative”. At the time of writing, however, the rating has climbed up to “Mixed”, with only 41 percent of the player reviews being positive.
The negative reviews for Battlefield: RedSec seems to come down to the fact that progression through the Battlefield 6 battle pass seems to be tied to also having to do objects in the battle royale mode. One reviewer notes that they wanted to play Battlefield 6, and don’t want to have to deal with the battle royale mode just to complete daily and weekly challenges for progress through the battle pass.
“I wouldn’t hate it so much if I wasn’t forced to play it for challenges in the main game,” wrote one user. “But I am. So I do. This is not why I bought Battlefield 6.”
Another user noted in their review that EA seems keen on pushing Battlefield: RedSec, since rerolling undesired weekly challenges still seems to disproportionately give players more objectives to complete in the battle royale mode.
“Oh, but you just can reroll the challenges!” wrote the reviewer. “Yeah and 3 of them are sill for the BR because they are pushing it hard on people that would not touch it even once…”
There have also been other reasons given for negative reviews, which seem to come down to the fact that the size of the maps in Battlefield 6 are still considered too small. These players have especially taken umbrage with the fact that RedSec has a massive map that can support more players, as well as a higher level of destruction in its environments.
“Oh wow a nice big map with lots of POIs and flanks,” wrote one reviewer. “If only we could get something like this for the main game.”
Battlefield: RedSec was released earlier this week alongside the season 1 update for Battlefield 6. The battle royale mode puts 25 squads of four players each against each other, with the last squad standing being declared the winner. To further help ensure that players get into fights with each other, RedSec also has the genre staple of a constantly-shrinking circle. However, in a twist from other games in the genre, the circle here will outright kill the player, rather than letting them weave in and out of it during prolonged fights.
To tap into what makes Battlefield 6 special, RedSec also features combat vehicles that players can commandeer to take each other on. Leading up to the game mode’s release, however, some players expressed concerns that these vehicles might be too overpowered if the infantry player was unlucky and couldn’t find an appropriate weapon to take it on, like an RPG. To this, lead producer David Sirland said that “there are ways to handle it outside of that.”
Battlefield: RedSec and Battlefield 6 are both available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
