Battlefield 6 Cracks Down on Portal Bot Farms With XP Caps, Tests Progression on Curated Community Servers

Battlefield 6 is finally doing something about the XP-farm mess in Portal. The anti-farm changes started rolling out yesterday, and yes, this is EA and DICE trying to fix a launch issue that never should have dragged on this long: progression was glacial, and players understandably hacked around it with custom servers and bots. Now the studio is tightening the screws.

What changed (and why people were annoyed in the first place)

At launch, XP gains were so slow that even the no-lifers felt stuck. Casual players had it worse. Portal custom servers became the workaround, with tweaked settings and AI doing the heavy lifting so people could rank faster. EA and DICE first juiced XP to make standard play more rewarding. Then they added safeguards in Portal and, controversially, disabled progression in PvE for a stretch, which went over about as well as you would expect.

Community manager Shepard laid it out in a Steam post and owned the messaging problem:

"Many of you want full progression in solo/co-op and on curated custom servers - not just in matchmade PvP. There's real frustration about expectations vs. what shipped; our messaging around progression eligibility wasn't clear."

How the new system works

This is an initial test phase to make sure the anti-farming tools behave. Progression is being carefully turned back on where possible, with some very specific guardrails.

• Personal XP and unlocks are enabled again on a curated list of community servers. Consider it invite-only while they test.
• During this beta-ish period, global stat-tracking is paused for anyone participating. You still get XP and unlocks; your stats just won't tick for now.
• Anti-farm checks include: a minimum difficulty threshold, activity sweeps to catch AFK or scripted loops, a requirement to mix up your targeting instead of spamming one cheap tactic, and caps on XP you can earn per minute.
• If a server trips enough of those flags, progression flips off on that server until it meets the rules again.
• The server browser will clearly show whether a server allows progression, so you don't waste time guessing.
• EA and DICE want feedback while they collect data and tune the system.

So... does this fix the grind?

That is the goal. Between the earlier XP bump and these Portal guardrails, ranking up should feel less like pushing a boulder uphill. It's still a test, so expect more tweaks, but the direction is right.

Meanwhile, there's a credits dust-up

Separate from the XP saga, a notable ex-dev says the game did not properly credit some of the people who built its foundation. That includes the former campaign lead, who says he and others put in serious time only to be left out when it counted. His words:

"Disappointed" he and other devs "were not properly credited" in the new FPS after working "tirelessly for 1 to 2.5 years, building the foundation."

It's a messy look while the team is trying to rebuild goodwill on the gameplay side. If the Portal changes stick, at least the progression side of the house might finally feel sane.