Concept art for EA’s next Battlefield game may have used a real-life photo of an explosion in Gaza

The artist who created the first concept art for the next Battlefield game may have included real-life imagery of an attack on Gaza.

In September 2024, EA shared the first details on its next Battlefield game, which is currently in production at multiple internal studios.

The information was accompanied by a single image, showing the Battlefield logo and concept art of a city under attack.

On Sunday, however, freelance concept artist Emad Alden posted on X that he had spotted a familiar explosion in the concept art.

According to Alden, an explosion in the middle of the concept art looks identical to that in a photo of an explosion in a real-life city.

The photo was then found elsewhere by X user DANNYonPC with a caption describing it as a Reuters photo of an explosion in Gaza taken on May 12, 2021.

TheGamer then verified that the photo does indeed belong to Reuters, locating a watermarked version on the news agency’s own website.

Via @emadalden_
(Had to add some extra context to it tho)

— DANNYonPC (@DANNYonPC) January 19, 2025

While neither EA nor DICE has yet commented on the situation, there could have been a number of reasons as to why the explosion ended up in the concept art.

“Sometimes concept artists need to finish images fast so most likely they just looked for an explosion with the correct perspective,” Alden theorised in a reply to a follower on X.

Another user noted that sometimes concept artists use asset packs which include realistic explosions, but don’t often give context on where those images came from.

An example of this occurred last year when War Thunder developer Gaijin Entertainment had to apologise after an explosion from the 1986 Challenger Disaster was used in key art for the game.

Following the discovery, War Thunder’s community manager explained that the explosion “was part of an aerial explosion reference pack used by our artists and the context was lost”, and promised that it would be removed from the image.

While there’s a chance that the artist wasn’t aware of the source of the explosion in the Battlefield concept art, however, the sensitivity surrounding the recent conflict in Gaza will presumably result in EA taking steps to address the situation.