Update: 15-05-2025 23:39 BST - Battlefield’s global community manager has responded to worries over Battlefield 4’s servers, claiming a “technical error” was stopping people from renewing subscriptions on PlayStation. The issue has now been resolved.
Battlefield 4, despite releasing in 2013, maintains an active player base. There have been four entries in the series released since Battlefield 4; a couple of these entries aren’t particularly well-regarded (Battlefield Hardline and Battlefield 2042), and the other two also remain relatively active considering their age (Battlefield 5 and Battlefield 1).
One of the implications of the Battlefield community being spread across several games is that Electronic Arts, and each game’s respective developer, need to maintain servers for each of these games, rather than focusing solely on the newest entry.
Battlefield 4 Rent-A-Server Owners Are Worried
However, Battlefield 4 server owners are worried that EA could be planning to sunset the game despite its active player base.A Reddit post from Sloth, a Battlefield 4 server owner, reveals that they’ve lost the ability to renew their server subscription on PlayStation.
Several Battlefield games offer a “rent-a-server” programme where players can rent and run private servers. This allows players to enforce custom rulesets and map rotations, rather than relying on matchmaking.
According to Sloth, every other server owner they’ve talked to has reported the same thing: server renewals have been disabled.
“If existing servers aren’t renewed in the next few weeks, they will permanently shut down,” writes Sloth. “I don’t know if this is EA is trying to quietly shut down Battlefield 4 communities, push people to Battlefield 2042, or just force players into Quick Match using DICE-owned servers. Either way, it feels like we’ve been abandoned. To make it worse, there’s been no official announcement, and as many of you know, the EA forums are completely useless; no updates.”
It’s unlikely that EA is trying to push people towards Battlefield 2042, considering the unannounced Battlefield 6 is expected to release later this year or next year.
EA recently announced the permanent closure of Anthem’s servers, which will render the game unplayable in under a year. Though we don’t have official numbers (outside of Steam), one would assume that Battlefield 4 is far more active than Anthem.
It’s interesting timing for this to come up, considering the current prevalence of theStop Killing Games consumer movement, which aims to prevent publishers from making games permanently unplayable, as has happened to The Crew, Multiversus, and several other titles. However, considering Battlefield 4 would be playable even without private servers (or multiplayer in general), this prospective legislation wouldn’t apply.
