Former Battlefield 6 developer slams EA for leaving himself and other Ridgeline staff out of the credits

Former Ridgeline Games boss and Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto has spoken out against the diminished representation of certain old Ridgeline colleagues in Battlefield 6’s credits, pointing out that some have been “entirely omitted” despite their years of work laying the “foundation” for EA’s new FPS.

Ridgeline were once pretty central to Battlefield 6. Back in 2022, they were unveiled as the creators of the next Battlefield singleplayer campaign, but EA shut them down in the course of mass layoffs over February 2024, with some Ridgeline staff being transferred to another Battlefield studio, Ripple Effect.

“I’m disappointed to see that many of my former teammates from Ridgeline Games were not properly credited in the recent release of Battlefield 6,” Lehto wrote in a LinkedIn post yesterday.

“These talented developers worked tirelessly for 1 to 2.5 years, building the foundation of the game, before I left voluntarily and the studio was subsequently shuttered,” he went on. “Despite their significant contributions, most who were laid off were relegated to a ‘Special Thanks’ section at the very end of the credits — and several were omitted entirely, including myself.

“Out of respect for my colleagues and the awesome work they poured into this project, I want to take a moment to properly recognize them — listing their names and roles as I would have preferred them to appear in the credits. Game development is a team effort, and every contributor deserves fair acknowledgment.”

Specifically, Lehto cites software engineers Jessica Moore and Dan Carr, lead tech artist Rohan Knuckey, and lead character artist Andres Naranjo as having been unfairly overlooked. He credits himself as vice president, studio general manager and franchise director. Here’s a video of the full official BF6 credit reel, for context.

Incomplete crediting of developers is one of the persistent evils that affects big budget games. Developers may labour on a game for the best part of a decade and come away without an appropriate namecheck, because they left or were laid off before shipping. External contributors and people in certain, devalued areas of game creation are more prone to being left out. Sometimes, the threat of a withheld credit is used as a cudgel to stop people resigning from roles they hate.

All that said, it’s worth noting that Lehto’s reading of Battlefield 6’s credits is a bit sketchy. As he acknowledges in the comments on that LinkedIn post, three of the people he says EA have omitted are actually cited elsewhere in the credits.