The weird thing here is that Call of Duty WWII did the same thing, including women as soldiers in the multiplayer mode. It became one of the biggest sellers on PS4/Xbox One.
Are Call of Duty fans more mature than Battlefield fans?
Call of Duty started giving players the ability to pick genders in multiplayer in Ghost, which was released in 2013 and was set during modern-day, which made it.. let's just say an easier pill to swallow for sexists at the time due to its modern setting, it also helps that the alt-right didn't have such a strong following at the time until Gamergate blew up in 2014, so whatever anger gamers may have had with COD WW2 having playable women was already unleashed years ago.
DICE released two modern day Battlefield titles in 2013 and 2015 which had an all-male soldiers in multiplayer, it wasn't until a
DLC for Battlefield 1 until they added female soldiers for the first time in the mainline franchise history, and even then, you could only use a female soldier in one specific faction and class archetype, Battlefield hasn't given people the option to freely pick the soldier's gender until
2018 with Battlefield V, and it being a world war 2 game on top of that drove gamers mad.
TL;DR: DICE was so late to the party while COD's developers have been progressive with their inclusions long before the alt-right was brought to light. Had they given people the option to play as female soldiers since Battlefield 4, the outrage over BFV (or rather BF1) would've never been this huge.
