EA Flip-Flops On Battlefield: Heroes Pricing, Fans Angry

An anonymous reader writes "Ben Kuchera from Ars Technica is reporting that EA/DICE has substantially changed the game model of Battlefield: Heroes, increasing the cost of weapons in Valor Points (the in-game currency that you earn by playing) to levels that even hardcore players cannot afford, and making them available in BattleFunds (the in-game currency that you buy with real money). Other consumables in the game, such as bandages to heal the players, suffered the same fate, turning the game into a subscription or pay-to-play model if players want to remain competitive. This goes against the creators' earlier stated objectives of not providing combat advantage to paying customers. Ben Cousins, from EA/DICE, argued, 'We also frankly wanted to make buying Battlefunds more appealing. We have wages to pay here in the Heroes team and in order to keep a team large enough to make new free content like maps and other game features we need to increase the amount of BF that people buy. Battlefield Heroes is a business at the end of the day and for a company like EA who recently laid off 16% of their workforce, we need to keep an eye on the accounts and make sure we are doing our bit for the company.' The official forums discussion thread is full of angry responses from upset users, who feel this change is a betrayal of the original stated objectives of the game."

Comments

Honest from the start

[JeffSpudrinski]

You have to admit that he's right about needing to pay wages and such...but they should have been honest from the start. "Bait and switch" comes to mind here.

I don't play this particular game and I'm very selective about what I do play for reasons such as this. I was leery about my Steam account before all the crap with Modern Warfare 2 and was annoyed that I had to register for Steam when I bought my copy of Portal off a retail shelf a while back. I had to go online, but was able to tweak the settings so that I didn't have to be logged in to play it.

The simple fact is this: online play is big time now, and game developers will need to make money off of it to stay in business.

Again, though...they need to be honest from the start and not change things suddenly.

-JJS

Re:BF a dead franchise

[pushf popf]

So I guess instead of paying money to pretend to be someone else, I'll go make and eat a gourmet meal, get laid, then maybe do some SCUBA diving.

Oops! did I say that out loud?

This just in: "Actual reality is much better than virtual reality"

Re:So?

[__aamnbm3774]

The issue is that in the beginning we where told that nothing you could buy for "real money" would give you an advantage over non-paying players.

oh well, cry me a river. shut up.

its like the 10th time i've read this crybaby post. EULAs and Contracts change constantly everywhere, complain to the company, not us, we get it, you're crybaby bitches.

Re:Entitlement psychology

[TheMeuge]

Troll my ass you loser.