A leaked footage shared earlier today on the popular Chinese online video sharing website Bilibili provides the first look at the Battle Royale map that Battlefield 6 players will eventually find in the game.
It was early 2024 when we first reported on a rumor that the new Battlefield installment would include a Battle Royale mode. That rumor, from renowned leaker Tom Henderson, correctly predicted the game’s October 2025 launch date and also guessed that the mode would be available at launch. However, since then, it’s become obvious that this would not be the case. First, there was a report from content creator rivalXfactor, and then, more importantly, EA did not make any mention of Battle Royale modes when describing the modes that will be there when Battlefield 6 is released.
On the other hand, dataminers found mention of the mode in the game files over two months ago, and the Battlefield Labs account recently teased a Battle Royale mode that would be coming to the testing program soon. It looks like the mode has finally been made available to testers, leading to the leaked video mentioned above. The obvious conclusion is that BR will be introduced to Battlefield 6 at some point after launch; perhaps the developers wanted to focus on the core modes first while they ironed out Battle Royale, which is obviously very different from all the other modes.
A free-to-play BR mode is going to be critical to even attempt to reach the lofty 100 million players target shared internally by publisher Electronic Arts. As much as long-time fans of the franchise loved the Battlefield 6 beta, it was still very much a classic, albeit refined, Battlefield experience, and there aren’t anywhere near 100 million BF aficionados out there. It will take a very solid Battle Royale mode to pull at least part of that audience away from the likes of Apex Legends, Call of Duty Warzone, Fortnite, et cetera.
In other Battlefield 6 news, the developers have just confirmed that ray tracing has been left out of the game in order to focus on performance instead.
