The multiplayer factions have been confirmed, and they won’t include France or Russia.

Battlefield 1 multiplayer factions won’t include France and Russia

Update:

The French are confirmed for multiplayer as DLC.

In an interview with Lemonde, DICE’s Julien Wera acknowledged the importance of the country’s contribution in the war, and cited this as the reason that they wouldn’t be included straight off the bat.

Running the interview through Google Translate, it seems that the French troops will get a special dedicated DLC after launch. No word on whether this will be paid or free.

Thanks to our reader Antal120 for the tip!

Subscribe to the VG247 newsletter Get all the best bits of VG247 delivered to your inbox every Friday! Enable JavaScript to sign up to our newsletter

Original story:

The multiplayer factions for Battlefield 1 were confirmed on Twitter yesterday.

When asked which nations would be included in multiplayer, the Battlefield Twitter account replied, “British, German, Austro-Hungarian, Italian, Ottoman, and American.”

For those of you that fall into EA’s younger audience bracket and as such haven’t the foggiest idea as to what World War 1 is, it involved France and Russia from the very beginning. England, France and Russia were part of the Entente alliance, and France made up a big chunk of the Western Front.

So the absence of these two countries as multiplayer factions is puzzling to say the least.

People responding to the announcement have been quick to point out the death toll for the countries EA have included and the dates at which they joined the war, most notably with America who pitched in the year before the war ended and lost 100,000 soldiers compared to France and Russia, who each lost over 1 million.

Unlike the absence of female soldiers in multiplayer, this is rather an odd decision on EA’s part considering the overwhelmingly huge numbers of soldiers from France and Russia that fought in the war, and the countries’ importance in it.

There may have been a hint that French soldiers might be added post launch in a subsequent tweet tha read, “Confirmed, there is no French army at launch.”

What do you think about the omission of these two countries in the multiplayer? Let us know in the comments.