We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

Unlock down: DICE to hand out “shortcut” weapon kits for Battlefield 4 over next two weeks

Battlefield 4 has been out since October, which seems like yonks ago now.

We haven’t written a lot about about Battlefield 4’s Player Appreciation Month, and if we could write our way through February again I’m sure we’d do the same. Where DICE’s pledge to drop DLC until they’d fixed everything that was broken in Battlefield was a sober and sensible mark of respect to their suffering playerbase, a month of in-game unlocks and community missions didn’t seem like an awful lot of skin off their backs.

That said, the men and women who regularly shoot at you in Battlefield 4 are about to become significantly better equipped – and you’ve a right to know about that, and choose whether or not to join them. DICE are releasing a couple of voluntary “shortcut kits” over the next two weeks, which will unlock a number of the game’s existing higher-level weapons.

The kits are designed to allow players to “make up for lost time” or “catch up”. It’s an initiative presumably designed to help counter the catastrophic bugs that kept players from the game in its first months.

From now until Monday, February 24, all players will be able to download a Hand Gun shortcut kit, and Premium players a DMR kit on top of that. Between February 25 and March 4, every player will then have access to a Grenades kit – with a further Shotgun kit reserved for Premium members.

You’ll find the kits priced at $0 in Battlelog’s Store section during the relevant periods, or under the ‘Premium giveaway’ button on the News tab if you’re a Premium player.

DICE announced Player Appreciation Month as a thank you for the player feedback they’ve received since launch, and which they take “very seriously”.

The kits are a strange idea, given that they circumvents a progression system DICE have presumably put a lot of work into. Do you think you’ll take advantage of them?