Battlefield REDSEC Adds Proximity Chat Today and a $1.3M Competitive Season

Maya Collins16/09/20263 min readPress release

Battlefield REDSEC just dropped a stack of news, and two things stand out: proximity chat goes live today, and the competitive side is coming back with more than $1.3 million on the table.

Here’s everything EA and Battlefield Studios announced.

Proximity chat goes live today

Starting today, September 15, REDSEC players will start hearing the squads around them. This is the first version of proximity chat, and it’s rolling out in Battle Royale to begin with. If you’ve played anything with open-mic proximity, you know the drill. It turns quiet corners into ambushes and gives away positions the second someone forgets to mute.

Battlefield Studios is calling this an initial launch and says it wants player feedback before pushing it wider. They’re watching audio range, clarity, moderation tools, and how much the feature actually changes matches. That last part is the one to watch. Proximity chat lives or dies on its moderation, and rolling it out in BR first to gather data before expanding is the sensible way to handle it.

Rapid Royale: a faster way to drop in

The other new addition is Rapid Royale, a variant of Battle Royale arriving in Season 5. It’s built on the same foundation as REDSEC’s standard BR but tuned for speed: fewer players, smaller maps, faster circles, and shorter matches. Less time looting and rotating, more time shooting.

It’s aimed at players who want a quick round without committing to a full-length BR match. Whether it pulls people off the main mode or just adds variety to the playlist is the open question, but a faster BR is exactly the kind of thing that keeps a battle royale feeling fresh.

The competitive ladder, from Cash Cups to Elite

This is the big one. REDSEC is building out a full competitive pipeline across APAC, EMEA and the Americas, and the prize money is no joke.

It kicks off with Cash Cups on September 19, weekly tournaments running through October 10 with $150,000 in total prizing split evenly across the three regions. From there the Open Series (October 24 to November 21) is the proving ground: up to 384 teams per region fight through 24-team lobbies, top 12 advancing each round, all chasing a place in the Elite Series.

The Elite Series is the top tier. It returns in Season 5 with a $1,338,000 global prize pool, $446,000 in each region, running from December 4, 2026 through January 16, 2027. That’s a proper competitive structure with a clear road from open bracket to main stage, which is what a shooter needs if it wants a scene that sticks around.

The bet EA is making

REDSEC launched as part of the biggest Battlefield in franchise history, and this is EA making sure it doesn’t peak and fade. Proximity chat hands the casual crowd new stories to tell, Rapid Royale keeps the playlist moving, and a $1.3 million season gives the grinders something to climb toward. Together it reads like a studio betting REDSEC has staying power, and putting real money behind it.

Full details are on the official Battlefield blog.