Out of curiosity, I decided to look up DICE on glassdoor. And while the ratings are great, the one constant complaint I've seen is how messy the company and the managements are. Here are some examples:
"The game studio is divided in siloes that don't share the same goals. This leads to dysfunctional communication, lack of progress, as well as a lack of a clear vision. Strong presence of office politics; persuade the right people, "play the game", and pretend like any issues are non-existent to maintain a facade amongst people."
- May 2019
"The work environment can often be toxic with bad displays of behaviour especially in the leadership ranks. There is a general lack of compassion from the top down where you are really made to feel like you are just a resource that is there to deliver results. A lack of clarity and direction in the products makes the development process chaotic, frustrating and leads to crunch."
- October 2020
"Top-heavy decision-making. Most of the time it feels like someone high above decided something and that is the law. When employees bring up feedback it's already too late because EA already signed off on it. Problem is that they tend to sign off on something completely overscoped."
- May 2021
"Management has no idea what they are doing"
- January 2022
You get the idea. Granted it is pretty easy to write fake reviews on glassdoor and some of these were probably written in spite due to admittingly piss-poor condition of BF2042, but this theme of poor management has been around a few years prior to the release of the game.
I'd like to think EA is just grinding the axe right now, ready to bring it down on DICE at the chopping block