EA and DICE are committed to putting women in prominent roles in upcoming World War 2 FPS Battlefield 5. Some Reddit posters aren't too pleased with that decision, or with a prosthetic arm featured in one of the game's trailers, and have taken to the subreddit to criticize Battlefield 5's historical accuracy, defend its historical accuracy, or argue that historical accuracy doesn't matter. It's now gotten so bad that the subreddit's moderators have banned posts arguing about historical accuracy altogether.
"We're done, it's over," a post from moderator u/sloth_on_meth reads. "New rule: No more bitching about historical accuracy, it's a game, not a history book. [Violations] will have consequences."
"Reddit admins have confirmed brigading and the modteams of the subs in question are fully cooperating to make sure it doesn't happen again," the post reads. "Hate us all you want but we're done with this bullshit. This issue has been discussed in a million threads but we've never been brigaded more than we have in the past months. Admins can only keep up with so much. We're done wasting our time on this, every point has been made, no you're not sexists or whatever, but this is just repetitive now."
In an update, u/sloth_on_meth said, "we get that y'all have valid criticism about battlefield V and the customisation options within the game. Sadly, this subreddit has proven to be unable to have a civil discussion about these things without devolving into name calling and slapfights." Following accusations from disgruntled users, in another update u/sloth_on_meth said, "WE ARE NOT PAID BY, CONTROLLED BY OR AFFILIATED TO EA OR DICE."
As a last-ditch effort to let the subreddit's community get all the pent-up anger out of its system, the mods have created a temporary "historical accuracy megathread." At the time of writing, it has over 400 comments.
As one example of the type of post this rule is meant to prevent: earlier this week, one user claiming to be a historian posted a thread titled "calling me uneducated is the last straw" in response to EA COO Patrick Söderlund's statement that the backlash against women in Battlefield 5 "is not OK," and that the people criticizing the feasibility of women fighting on the frontlines of WWII "are uneducated." In a twist surely no one saw coming, the poster turned out not to be a historian, or to have gone to the school they claimed. The post was deleted shortly thereafter, but it's still archived on ResetEra.
