Battlefield 4 is a multiplayer-focused first-person shooter developed by DICE and published by Electronic Arts in 2013. Built on the Frostbite 3 engine, it introduced "Levolution" — large-scale, real-time map events such as collapsing skyscrapers and flooding interiors — to its signature large-scale combined-arms combat across land, sea, and air.
Battlefield 4 is a first-person shooter developed by DICE (Digital Illusions CE) and published by Electronic Arts. Released in October 2013 for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions following at those consoles' launches, it is the twelfth main installment in the Battlefield series. The game runs on DICE's proprietary Frostbite 3 engine, which enables large-scale environmental destruction and the series-defining combined-arms gameplay across infantry, ground vehicles, aircraft, and naval craft.
The headline feature of Battlefield 4 is Levolution — scripted but dramatic environmental events that permanently alter a map during a match. On Siege of Shanghai, players can topple a skyscraper into the surrounding streets, reshaping chokepoints and forcing squads to adapt on the fly. Other maps feature rising floodwaters, collapsing dams, and sandstorms that reduce visibility to near zero. While the events themselves are scripted, they inject a sense of spectacle and unpredictability that few multiplayer shooters had attempted at this scale.
Multiplayer supports up to 64 players on PC and next-generation consoles across a wide range of modes, including the series staple Conquest — a large-scale flag-capture tug-of-war — as well as Rush, Obliteration, Domination, and Team Deathmatch. Four soldier classes (Assault, Engineer, Support, Recon) encourage role specialisation and squad interdependence. The Commander mode, returning from Battlefield 2, lets one player per team issue orders, call in UAVs, and drop supply crates from an overhead map view, adding a light layer of asymmetric strategy.
The single-player campaign follows Tombstone Squad, a US special operations unit caught in a geopolitical crisis between China, Russia, and the United States. Running roughly five to six hours, it serves primarily as a vehicle showcase and tutorial for the game's mechanics rather than a centrepiece experience. Critical reception to the campaign was mixed, though the multiplayer component drew near-universal praise.
Battlefield 4's launch was marred by widespread server instability and bugs that caused crashes and lost progress — issues severe enough that EA temporarily halted development of expansions to focus on fixes. Over the following months DICE issued a series of patches that significantly stabilised the game, and a class-action lawsuit was eventually settled. The recovery is often cited as an early example of a major studio walking back a troubled release through sustained post-launch support.
Despite its rocky start, Battlefield 4 became one of the most enduringly popular entries in the series. Its servers remained active well into the following decade, supported by a steady stream of free content updates under the "Community Games" programme. Edge magazine's inclusion of the game in its 100 Greatest Games list reflects the regard in which its multiplayer design — particularly its map scale, vehicle variety, and moment-to-moment chaos — came to be held once the technical issues were resolved.