Battlefield 3, possibly the year’s most anticipated modern combat shooter is getting released in just over a month. You’re likely already aware that the game will be shipping without any mod support – meaning no user-created maps or single player total conversions either.
Let them explain why.
"It’s a huge investment for us to do something like that, and also a bit complicated, and to some degree there’s also [a concern] security-wise," DICE’s Karl Magnus Troedsson said to IGN. "It’s a bit scary to take an investment like Battlefield 3 and just let people dig into that engine and do whatever they want. We’re dedicated to try and really limit the amount of hacks and exploits that come out there, but as soon as you let something like that out, people have all the tools in the world that they need to sit there and try to create cheats that actually would destroy the experience for a lot of other people.
"I’m not blaming mod tools for hacks and exploits in any way, but there’s a lot of things we need to consider."
It’s not all doom and gloom. Troedsson hasn’t ruled out the possibility of mods appearing at some point in the future. “Mod tools won’t be in Battlefield 3 when we ship it, but I can say this – we have heard the community loud and clear. We are talking about it in the studio. I’m not promising that we’re going to do it in any way, but we have heard it, and we’ll see what we do in the future.†he said.
Of course, the tin-foil-hatted among you would say the lack of mod tools – and user-generated content – is so that EA can make more money off fans by selling official maps as DLC. And you’re probably right.
As a bonus, here’s the game’s official PC specs.
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
- OS: WINDOWS VISTA (SERVICE PACK 2) 32-BIT
- PROCESSOR: 2 GHZ DUAL CORE (CORE 2 DUO 2.4 GHZ OR ALTHON X2 2.7 GHZ)
- MEMORY: 2 GB
- HARD DRIVE: 20 GB
- GRAPHICS CARD (AMD): DIRECTX 10.1 COMPATIBLE WITH 512 MB RAM (ATI RADEON 3000, 4000, 5000 OR 6000 SERIES, WITH ATI RADEON 3870 OR HIGHER PERFORMANCE)
- GRAPHICS CARD (NVIDIA): DIRECTX 10.0 COMPATIBLE WITH 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 OR 500 SERIES WITH NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT OR HIGHER PERFORMANCE)
- SOUND CARD: DIRECTX COMPATIBLE
- KEYBOARD AND MOUSE
- DVD ROM DRIVE
RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
- OS: WINDOWS 7 64-BIT
- PROCESSOR: QUAD-CORE CPU
- MEMORY: 4 GB
- HARD DRIVE: 20 GB
- GRAPHICS CARD: DIRECTX 11 COMPATIBLE WITH 1024 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 OR ATI RADEON 6950)
- SOUND CARD: DIRECTX COMPATIBLE
- KEYBOARD AND MOUSE
- DVD ROM DRIVE
Last Updated: September 21, 2011
