We’re four days away from the first Star Wars video game story since Star Wars Kinect, but few people are talking about what Star Wars Battlefront II’s campaign might look like. Instead, the internet discourse has been all about microtransactions, and players feel so ripped off that they’ve granted publisher EA the award for most downvoted Reddit comment of all time.
Outstream Video
At -341,000 points (and growing) in less than 24 hours, this post from Reddit user EACommunityTeam defending Battlefront II’s locking of characters like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker is by far the most unpopular comment in Reddit’s history. The previous leader, as compiled on this wiki page, was just -24,333. (Points are determined by starting at 0, adding the number of upvotes including the original poster’s, and subtracting the number of downvotes.)
“The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes,” reads the post, a response to one Redditor complaining that they had spent $80 on Star Wars Battlefront II only to find Vader locked behind a paywall that would take either real money or dozens of hours of gameplay to access.
EACommunityTeam continued:
As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.
We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets.
Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.
The post is getting thousands of downvotes every few minutes, so it’s possible that bots are involved here, but this is an impressive milestone nonetheless, up there with EA’s crown of Worst Company In America in 2012 and 2013. And it’s hard not to feel bad for all the developers who crunched their asses off to ship this game and had nothing to do with loot crates.
