Yesterday, it was reported that Battlefield 2042 owners had started a petition to receive refunds for their purchase. The petition comes after months of anger at EA and frustration over the state of the game. The creator of the petition claimed that they had a lawyer ready to take the case as a class action lawsuit if it reached 50,000 signatures. While it isn’t possible to confirm the validity of that claim, the petition has far surpassed the required number. At the time of writing, over 65,000 people have signed the petition.
If, as the petitioner claims, they are now able to get a lawyer to take the case it wouldn’t necessarily guarantee any refunds. Class action lawsuits typically take so long that by the time they are settled, or won, it has often been years since the people affected moved on from the product. However, that’s not the only potential outcome for frustrated Battlefield 2042 owners. In some cases, platform owners are willing to look past typical refund policies when a game is as broken as gamers think Battlefield 2042 is. Steam has begun offering refunds on Battlefield 2042 for those who request it. That’s despite the Steam refund policy being that the game must be played for less than two hours and the refund requested within 14 days.
Sony and Microsoft famously offered refunds to anyone who purchased Cyberpunk 2077. Sony even removed the game from its store completely until the developer was able to patch it to a playable state. Although the console manufacturers have not started offering anything like that for Battlefield 2042, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Depending on how far this petition and potential class-action lawsuit go, Microsoft and Sony may start offering refunds before it all ends up in court. Regardless, gamers lawyering up because they feel a game is that bad is a sign the developers have really messed up.