Electronic Arts has been in gaming news a lot lately, specifically in regards to the loot boxes and pay-to-win mechanics of Star Wars Battlefront II. Just recently, EA made additional headlines by getting the not so often coveted award of the most down voted comment in Reddit history. Apparently EA wants players to feel "pride and accomplishment" that they had to waste 40 hours grinding in Battlefront II just to unlock characters like Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker. This of course does not include time spent in the lobby, and is only if the player does not open any loot boxes, which contain rewards that may give the player an advantage over other players. These actions and others have led YouTube creator SidAlpha to put out a video in his "Dirty Devs" series focused on EA.
As user Feminymphist points out on reddit, EA is simply "making the outrage outdated". By saying they are making changes, even if those changes don't actually fix the problem, they change the narrative. As Feminymphist put it, "Every complaint you have will be met with someone who wants to tell you that the reason you have for being upset is outdated." EA did in fact make changes. They reduced the costs to unlock top tier heroes by 75%, but they also reduced credits for completing the main campaign, by 75%. As Pretty Good Gaming from YouTube put it, "They don't balance the gameplay...they just balance the outrage."
Many news articles reacted as you would expect, citing the reduction of cost to unlock characters, as if it fixed everything, and often also ignoring the reduced rewards. "What you gotta remember...is that your progressing is still locked behind a pay stroke grind wall." "Once you buy the game, you still have to grind, or pay, to unlock these characters." Have players had enough of being treated as just payers, or will the manipulation by EA work?
Edit:
Jim Sterling's recent video gives a nice synopsis of much of the controversy around Star Wars Battlefront 2. Strong language, those with sensitive ears please be advised.
As he points out, this recent controversy was nowhere near the first, and EA had already made "changes", walking back a little of the pay-to-win monetization originally in the game. "...All they really did was just take the top-tier most powerful stuff out of the RNG system, but still leave in a load of pay-to--win style advantages." Battlefront 2 includes a progression system similar to an RPG, but with all player advancement done through "star cards", which can be acquired through loot boxes, which of course, can be bought with real money. It should be of note that although Sterling often equates Battlefront 2 to a free-to-play monetization scheme in a premium priced game, that many free-to-play games do not take monetization to this level.
When did Darth Vader take over EA, and decide to force choke player's wallets? I can only hope that EA begins to feel the monetary consequences of their actions. It seems to at least had some effect, as EA's stock seems to be down, and they've actually gone to the extreme to hide the refund button on their customer support page.
Edit 2: It seems that the removal of the automatic refund button from EA's site was in fact automated. The refund button disappears once the payment has been processed, which happened to coincide with the latest controversy. SidAlpha covers how to request a refund through the site's chat system, as well as covering what is known to date about the latest controversies to a good degree in his latest video. Hopefully the refund system won't be too bogged down by the significant number of refunds that may be requested through the system.
As alarming as it may be, I don't think that EA have 'peaked' in their quest to add more features like this in their games.
Free2play based games really did re-write the rules on how publishers and developers game get money and now we see the traditional games take advantage of the freemium style.
It's a sad state of affairs but the biggest problem is that no matter what the outrage is, two things will almost always happen. The first is that there will always be people that will take advantage of every feature (even paid) in the game in order to get an advantage. The second is, even if people are outraged, they are very likely to forget their outrage after a while, usually that while is just a little bit less than the lifespan of the game. By the time Battlefront III comes out (or whatever it's natural successor is) I'm pretty sure that almost everyone that was angry now would have forgotten or probably forgiven EA and move on.
As long as this cycle keeps on happening, EA (and most other major publishers) will keep on trying to add more and ways to squeeze their players.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I agree.
Even with the outrage, it will likely have a substantial market. Many outraged now will probably buy it eventually, likely when it goes on Steam sale, if they ever wanted it.
But I may be wrong. I still have never played WoW, because I am against the idea of a subscription based game.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit