Remember last month when we reported that DICE has killed off the Battlefield 5 South Africa servers (and Middle East ones too)? Well, it seems there’s some good news for those playing the game in South Africa — at least for the time being.

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Over on the Battlefield 5 forums, DICE Community Manager PartWelsh announced that the studio has “temporarily” reactivated the Battlefield 5 South Africa servers! Note that this is only temporary as mentioned, and no definite date when they’ll be pulled down again. Check out the complete announcement below.

Hey folks,

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As of 1300 UTC today, we have temporarily reactivated South African Servers in Battlefield V. Since we initiated the change, the global situation has changed for the worse and more of us find ourselves at home, needing ways to occupy our time. In the spirit of Stay and Play, we’re doing what we can to re-establish those local servers and will work with our partners in South Africa to sustain them for as long as we can through this Global Pandemic. 

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We will go on to deactivate them again in the future. When we reach this point, we’ll look to serve you advance notice so that you understand when to expect this change.

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Please note that all servers across Battlefield V are spun up on demand, so you may not be able to observe them from the server browser until enough players have elected to queue for Matchmaking, and we’ve detected that there are enough players to kick off a fresh round.

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On behalf of EA DICE, our apologies that you weren’t served advanced notice of the change last month. We will ensure that when we come to disable them further down the line that you receive a better standard of communication on this.

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I’ll provide further updates on this topic here on the Battlefield Forums, via Answers HQ , and in partnership with Community Leaders in the region should we need to announce further changes.

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Many thanks,

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Freeman // @PartWelsh

EA DICE Global Community Manager

Well, that’s the silver lining for Battlefield 5 players during these tough times, no? No mention if this applies to Middle East servers, so I wouldn’t hold my breath for that. Let’s hope this becomes viable enough for DICE to not pull deactivated ’em in the future.

If you’re looking for the April update, DICE has mentioned already that it’s being rolled into the May one set for next month.