The talk of the town in the gaming industry right now is Battlefield 6 — the next entry in Electronic Arts' (EA) and DICE's long-running multiplayer FPS franchise. It made a huge splash when it was announced at the end of last month, with fans responding extremely positively to what its developers had to show during its multiplayer reveal showcase and the announcement of its Open Beta weekends on August 9-10 and August 14-17.
Indeed, the game has huge potential to be a return to form for Battlefield after the disappointment of Battlefield 2042, with players excited for the return of soldier classes, highly detailed map-altering destruction, and more.
One thing that's actually proven to be very controversial, though, is Battlefield 6's lack of an official server browser.
Server browsers let players filter servers by map, mode, gameplay settings, and more before joining them, and have been a staple of Battlefield multiplayer for years. The feature was left out of Battlefield 2042 in favor of matchmaking, however, and it's not going to be in Battlefield 6 either — at least for official servers.
That news has frustrated many in the community; however, DICE producer Alexia Christofi has attempted to assuage player concerns about the absence of a server browser, explaining that Battlefield 6 will have its own solution, she feels "caters to the majority of use cases."
I think our serber browser solution answers all these wants. Yes, it's via portal and shows community experiences, but these can award full XP, will be front and center in our main menu, not hidden - and will allow you to filter and search for specific things you want. (2/3)August 3, 2025
"I think our [server] browser solution answers all these wants. Yes, it's via portal and shows community experiences, but these can award full XP, will be front and center in our main menu, not hidden - and will allow you to filter and search for specific things you want," she wrote in a social media post after gathering feedback about the reasons server browsers are important to fans.
"Again, more to share on this in the future — but seeing all your replies I think what we have caters to the majority of use cases," she continued. "We can talk more about if/why it feels like it's not enough at a later date!"
Christofi's comments confirm that Battlefield 6 will leverage the server browser for the custom games tool Portal as its primary server browsing solution, and that DICE plans to feature it "front and center" on the main menu with options for filtering community servers by map, mode, ping, fullness, and region.
However, players thus far have been vocal that this isn't enough, as many want to be able to browse and join official servers outside of matchmaking and not depend on community members to open lobbies that have the game's official settings on them.
"Respectfully, I think this becomes redundant if there isn’t a way to filter for official DICE servers and honestly misses the entire point of what everyone has been saying if I'm understanding this correctly," reads one top reply to Christofi. "Everything mentioned although great for portal we want for official servers too and if brought to reality you’ll make a lot of soldiers more than happy."
You only have to look at what happened with Battlefield 2042 to see the flaws with the developers' current approach.
It has similar filtering options and full XP support for its Portal servers as well, but oftentimes, there aren't lobbies with vanilla settings to connect to. This forces players to use matchmaking, which subsequently doesn't allow them to choose the map they play on, the region of the server they're connecting to, or anything else.
Granted, if Battlefield 6 is as good as it looks, it will likely have far more players than 2042 did — and thus, many more vanilla-style Portal servers, and not just XP farms or lobbies with wacky custom modes.
Even so, though, I find myself in agreement with the community that there's really no reason for the game not to have a browser for official servers as Battlefield 4, Battlefield 1, and Battlefield V did. I hope the developers change their minds and implement one after all, but only time will tell if they do.
Some believe the requirement to matchmake into official servers indicates the presence of skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) in Battlefield 6 — a contentious system used in other games like Call of Duty that attempts to match players with equally skilled peers, leading to highly competitive matches.
Notably, EA did reportedly confirm "some skill factor" will influence Battlefield 6 matchmaking, though it's unclear if this is true SBMM or the automatic team balancer that attempts to make fair teams within a match after everyone connects to it. The latter has always been a part of the series.
Battlefield 6 is slated to launch on October 10, with the two Open Beta weekends this month giving players a chance to try it out (check out the PC system requirements to make sure you can run it).
The game is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PS5, with $70 preorders available now.
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