Battlefield 3 Community Threatens Blackout, Says This Could Be the Last Straw

Eder Campuzano February 22, 2012 4:14 PM EST

It seems the folks at Battlefieldo, one of the larger Battlefield 3 communities, have had enough of what they say is neglect and a lack of information regarding game updates and patches from Electronic Arts. In order to voice their disapproval of the publisher’s practices, the community, in a post by community manager Cory “Pr3sident” Niblett, has decided to go silent for a full 24 hours starting March 2.

The official thread at Battlefieldo says the plan is for there to be no interaction with the game by the community during that day. No logging on to play, tweeting about Battlefield or posting on the site. The protest is described as “silence fed right back into the mouths of those who have chosen to give us the very same silence.”

And what do the folks in the community want, exactly?

“We want the EA community management to give back control to DICE Community Management, more transparency in the way that the game developer communicates with the community,” Niblett said in an interview with DualShockers.

He also says the folks at DICE aren’t allowed to speak freely with members of the game community. It’s tough to open the lines of communication through EA, he says.

“[DICE] can’t talk about it. Community sites get no official news or communications,” Niblett said. “The whole process is flawed.”

It seems as though a regular update and patch schedule is one of many fixes they’ve offered to EA as an acceptable solution. But the problems are a bit deeper than that — much of what Niblett writes about seems to be fundamental tenets of customer service Battlefield 3 players have received since the game launched in October. And he says that most of the policies EA’s got in place prize profit and competition with Activision’s Call of Duty franchise at the expense of maintaining a quality relationship with its customers and the Battlefield community.

“EA is getting in the way,” he said. “There is no longer any open dialogue with the developers.”

The group has given EA until the day the blackout is scheduled to acknowledge Battlefieldo’s requests. If the publisher doesn’t respond to concerns, Niblett says this may be the end of his and other players’ support of the Battlefield franchise.

The move echoes the protest mentality that has seemed to pervade much of the world as of late, particularly the online sector. If you’ll remember, a 24-hour blackout of Wikipedia and Reddit did much to stop the Protect Intellectual Property and Stop Online Piracy acts from making it through the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, earlier this year.

The movement can be followed on Twitter with the hashtag #BF3Blackout or the users @dontrevivemebro and @Battlefieldo. We’ve reached out to EA representatives for comment and will update this story if we hear back.