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EA's 'Star Wars' PR Disaster Finally Pushed Gamers Into Open Revolt Against Loot Boxes (rollingstone.com)
Gaming company Electronic Arts is not having a good week. Bowing to pressure from early players of Star Wars Battlefront II and the historically negative reaction over the weekend to the company's response to complaints on Reddit, the company has now detailed significant cuts in the cost to unlock characters in its game and promised to continue to listen to player feedback. From a report: Most importantly, Electronic Arts today announced that they are reducing the number of credits needed to unlock top characters in the game by 75 percent. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader will now cost 15,000 credits. Emperor Palatine, Chewbacca and Leia Organa will now cost 10,000 and Iden will cost 5,000. Mashable reports on the outcry that took place over the weekend: Battlefront II isn't technically out until Nov. 17, but fans that subscribe to EA Access or Origin Access -- which give Xbox One and PC players, respectively, a five-day, 10-hour window to play EA games before they launch -- are discovering how those changes feel. And it's a bad scene, friends. "At the current price of 60,000 credits it will take you 40 hours of gameplay time to earn the right to unlock one hero or villain [in Star Wars: Battlefront II]," Reddit user TheHotterPotato wrote in a post. "That means 40 hours of saving each and every credit, no buying any crates at all, so no bonus credits from getting duplicates in crates." The Reddit post produced such a mind-blowingly negative response that an agent of EA actually responded. Unfortunately, that response made things even worse. EA's Reddit account is plastered with a barrage of downvotes, with one particular response receiving over 600,000 downvotes -- a record.
This is the inevitable result of microtransactions.
Long gone are there days of just making a game and shipping it.
EA doesn't make their numbers. Else all PR is good PR. Look at GTA V and its micro transactions. Has made rockstar more money than they ever dreamed. Think they will change this approach in the future? Not likely.
Also I believe things will get worse for gaming and not better in the short term. Just wait till major AAA games are only subscription based only which EA has indicated on their sports franchises.
EA first started milking customers with DLCs which were really portions of the game they purposefully removed, not added. Is it not enough to pay $50 for a bloody game? -Are they not profitable enough??
It's painfully obvious that they are using basic psychology techniques to frustrate gamers into buying more.
Shamelessly trying to squeeze every penny out of gamers that are ALREADY PAYING A PREMIUM is really bad for anyone involved in this project & the Star Wars gaming universe in general.
This is not to "create a sense of achievement." You do that with complexity, length and difficulty. This is a cheap money grab plain and simple.
EA just stop being a bunch of dicks. It's fucking Star Wars, IT'S ALREADY A CASH COW.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
and the worst part is the population just eats it up.
^^ This.
There are SO many good games out there to buy which are not DRMed at all leave alone constant-online-DRM, let you play locally without entanglements, and the company can't deny you the ability to play the game you bought later on just because they feel like it that day. They have no "microtransactions" or "pay to win". They're just good games.
Stop buying shit from companies like EA, you sheep. You keep giving them money, you are teaching them you will bend over for anything.
It used to be that you spend your $50'ish on the game and then you got to play it. Now you get a purposely crippled version of the game unless you want to shell out more and more money each-and-every-time you play it. No thanks.
The combination of "gaming", an activity that requires something that is fun, exciting, interesting, and engaging, and "corporation", which is the exact opposite thereof.
That's kind of silly logic, isn't it? There are literally millions of corporations who successfully provide people with fun, by offering products ranging from bicycles to board games to ocean cruises to pogo sticks to software.
If EA can't manage to offer fun, it's because EA is screwed up, not because corporations and fun are inherently incompatible.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Nice post.
But I disagree on one point:
Gamers are not only fed up. They start voting with their wallet.
They really don't. Preorders and Early Access orders are still widely used.
And speak of the devil. EA is now trying to shift the narritive to "omg, woe is me, we've gotten death threats." bullshit to try and derail this. Of course no proof is offered at all.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Game creators / studios receiving death threats? -- that's not extraordinary. That's become so sadly common, almost par for the course, that at this point it would be extraordinary if they hadn't received death threats.
People want long play and replayability. EA and many others have completely misunderstood and just added a bunch of pointless grinding exercises along with a monetary bypass.
Looks like my 5 year long boycott of EA is going well for me. It started with Origin, and realized that they've gone off the deep end for me.
As a side note it's not JUST EA I don't play, but I'm pretty picky with my games now. They have to have feeling. I've played Breath of the Wild, Odyssey, and quite a few indie games lately, and that's fine with me.