The launch of the highly anticipated Battlefield 6 began with a major disappointment for PC gamers. Many players who pre-ordered the game through the EA App were unable to access it on launch day. The problem stemmed from unresolved “content ownership verification” errors in EA’s own PC client. This led to a serious crisis on the game’s launch day.
The Battlefield 6 PC crisis only affected EA App users
One of the most surprising reactions to this fiasco came directly from Vince Zampella, the Battlefield franchise’s leader and EA executive. Zampella expressed his displeasure in a statement on social media platform X. The executive, who claimed to have “yelled” about the service outage, went so far as to advise Battlefield 6 players to refund the game through the EA App and purchase it on Steam. This was quite unusual for a company executive to recommend a competing platform over their own.

Zampella’s reason for this advice is quite simple. The Steam version of Battlefield 6 doesn’t require the EA App to play the game. This means Steam users can access the game seamlessly, unaffected by issues with EA’s servers. While the EA App was still down, thousands of players followed this advice and switched to Steam, quickly reaching a record 747,400 concurrent players. Zampella stated that he even plays the game on Steam.
EA announced that the issue was resolved approximately ten hours after the game’s release. The company also prepared a compensation package to appease the affected Battlefield 6 players. Accordingly, all players who tried unsuccessfully to access the game through the EA App on launch day will receive bonus XP boosts and a free premium battle pass for the game’s first season. However, this puts those who purchased the expensive “Phantom Edition” at a disadvantage. This means that the battle pass already included in this package will now be available for free to those who purchased the standard edition.
So, what are your thoughts on these developments?