EA in Hot Water

Microtransactions have been seeping into games like the plague over the last few years and for the most part I honestly don’t see the harm. Unlock skins and cosmetics, XP boosts and whatnot; basically stuff that doesn’t really impact the gameplay in a way that gives you an unfair advantage. However, locking content behind frustrating lootboxes and encouraging spending more money on a game you’ve already paid for is a new low, even for EA. EA’s latest Star Wars Battlefront II while impressive in beta, never touched upon its exact rewards mechanic up until now that is. They’ve poked the hornets nest and the fan outcry online is driving the game into the ground. The problem stems from the fact that iconic heroes like Darth Vader that are one of the USPs of any Star Wars game are locked behind these loot chests. Even if you buy the most expensive edition of the game, you’re not going to get them without spending a lot of time or a lot of money. The lootchests too give you credits that help unlocking these heroes, so even there you are given a chance at unlocking and the cost in terms of in game credits is quite high. The real trouble started when one EA developer replied to concerned gamers on reddit stating, “The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.”

To put things in perspective, unlocking Darth Vader would initially require 60,000 credits which would translate to roughly 40+ hours of matches, which is a lot for anyone. Most people don’t have that much time on their hands and to find out that just to unlock your favourite character it will take nearly two days of gameplay can be quite annoying.

Since then, the comment has received over 6 Lakh dislikes, making it the most disliked comment in Reddit history and gamers are up in arms over EA’s monetisation tactics. EA has responded that they have lowered credit costs by 75 per cent; ten hours of gameplay to unlock a hero does indeed feel like more of an accomplishment than mindlessly grinding for over 40 hours.  Lets hope Battlefront II can recover from this debacle.