In this table showing customers what they do and don’t get in the different editions of Battlefield 2042, the digital artbook and soundtrack are listed as bonuses for the most expensive Ultimate Edition of the game… except neither of these need to be paid for.
Reddit user /u/highlygoofed brought attention to this fact in a post recently on the /r/PCGaming subreddit feeling ripped off after buying the Ultimate Edition.
To the user’s surprise the artbook (and soundtrack) are not given to customers as a private download, but instead as public links anyone can use without spending a sent.
It’s a PDF of 57 pages on a public URL. It’s 174 MB for those who want to download it too should EA wake up and make this private in some way.
As expected for a gaming artbook it has a lot of concept art and developer comments about how and why the game looks like it does.
Our favourite part of the book, however, is not anything involving imagery. On the second page there’s an alternate reality timeline explaining how the world got to where it is in Battlefield 2042, starting with 2028 where things start getting bad due to climate change.
As for the soundtrack to the game, another digital bonus apparently only for for Ultimate Edition customers, /u/highlygoofed didn’t provide a link, but we found it ourselves easily enough.
There’s an official upload of the OST on Spotify which is embedded below. The 14 tracks in the OST come to just over 43 minutes.
We’re not really sure what happened here. Did EA always intend for these assets to be public? If so why list them as bonuses for the most expensive version of the game?
If the artbook and soundtrack were always intended to be exclusive pieces of content for high-paying customers then why leave then on public websites and, in the case of the soundtrack, easily searchable on one of the biggest music sites ever?
Mysteries aside this is, at the very least, good for the general public who gets a freebie that may have been locked away.
