Battlefield: Bad Company is a 2008 first-person shooter game developed by DICE and published by Electronic Arts for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is the sixth installment in the Battlefield series. It was released in North America on 23 June 2008, followed by a European release on 26 June.

While previous installments were mostly released for PCs, Bad Company was the first game to be developed for consoles and feature a full single-player campaign. Its story follows protagonist Private Preston Marlowe and his exploits to steal gold from mercenaries along with his squad in the midst of a war between the United States and Russia.

The game emphasizes squad-based combat, while retaining the vehicular and large-scale multiplayer warfare of the previous entries. It also marks DICE's debut of its studio-developed Frostbite engine, which allows for highly-destructible environments, such as the ability to blow holes through walls. The engine has since been updated and used in later titles.

Bad Company received mostly positive reviews from critics, who praised the story's humor and technical aspects such as sound, atmosphere and the game engine. A sequel, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, was released in 2010.

In the game, players can hold one primary weapon which each has its own secondary, along with a combat knife, grenades and other picked up explosives and devices. Players start with 100 health, which is reduced by damage. Wounded players heal by using the LIFE-2 auto-injector. The environment is almost entirely destructible, but bullets cannot go through most walls. The ammunition system uses a bullet calculator, shown on the HUD, and players can endlessly repair vehicles with power tools unless they are completely destroyed. Airstrikes and Mortar Strikes can also be utilized.

Battlefield: Bad Company has an assortment of military vehicles from each of the game's three factions that can be used by the player. Tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored cars, attack helicopters, patrol boats, mobile anti-aircraft weapon system. Unlike some previous versions in the Battlefield series, fixed-wing aircraft such as fighter jets and bomber planes are not available in this game.

The Frostbite game engine allows 90% of the environment to be destroyed, including buildings, vegetation (including trees, grass, and bushes), vehicles, other players and the ground itself. For gameplay purposes, the frames of some buildings and objects remain indestructible to prevent total destruction of key points and to prevent the map from being completely flat. Additionally, the game features dynamic lighting to correlate with the changing environment.

Multiplayer supports up to 24 players. Gold Rush was the only multiplayer mode included in the initial release of Battlefield: Bad Company. The setup of the game is an Attackers vs. Defenders scenario. The eight initial maps are Harvest Day, Over and Out, End of the Line, Ascension, Valley Run, Deconstruction, Oasis, and Final Ignition, each with destructible environments, certain atmospheres, and vehicles. One team must defend two crates filled with gold while the other team attempts to destroy the crates. Once the crates are destroyed, more of the map is available to fight on with new crates appearing, along with added reinforcement numbers. The attacking team has a limited amount of respawns to achieve their goal of capturing the 3-5 gold stashes either by setting charges or simply destroying the two crates of gold at each base. The defending team has an unlimited amount of respawns available, but their goal is to exhaust the attacking teams respawns.