Destructoid opined that it was "a game nobody will remember a year from now." Writing for Nintendo Life, Chris Scullion denounced the game for being a grind and having limited replayability outside of the campaign mode, but did offer some praise to the co-op mode. Hyper Sauce of GamesRadar+ criticized the game's reliance on microtransactions, and stated that WWE video games had reached "its rock bottom".
The Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of WWE 2K Battlegrounds received "mixed or average reviews" according to review aggregator website Metacritic. On November 23, WWE 2K revealed that WrestleMania 36 host and tight end of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski, and NBA 2K21 current gen cover star and point guard of the Portland Trail Blazers, Damian "Laheem" Lillard, would be available as playable characters the following day and December 2, respectively. Later, it was announced that the characters could also be unlocked via microtransactions, like many other unlockables in the game. On August 16, IGN revealed the game's entire roster, with superstars like Hulk Hogan, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, and "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt appearing in the base game, and additional superstars including Doink the Clown, The Boogeyman, Earthquake, and Typhoon announced to arrive as free, unlockable content in the months following the game's release. On May 4, 2020, an ESRB Rating confirmed that 2K Battlegrounds would be released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch (the first WWE game to be released on Switch since 2K18) and would be the first WWE game to release on Stadia, but 2K have yet to confirm this. The trailer featured John Cena, The Rock, Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair and Stone Cold Steve Austin. On April 27, 2020, 2K officially announced WWE 2K Battlegrounds as a spin-off to the series, while also announcing that video game industry veteran Patrick Gilmore would be the new game's executive producer. Months after the maligned release of WWE 2K20, rumors emerged that 2K's next WWE title would be entirely different from the rest of the yearly WWE 2K series. WWE 2K Battlegrounds was developed in the aftermath of the poor reception of 2019's WWE 2K20, which was criticized for its graphics, gameplay and various glitches.