top of page
EA STAR WARS
BATTLEFRONT 2
CONTROVERSY
In November 2017, EA published Star Wars Battlefront 2, developed by DICE, a subsidiary of the company. The beta test for the game was in early October, giving players the chance to play a version of the game a few weeks early, allowing the developers to receive feedback about the game and make adjustments to the game before its release. During the beta test, EA received backlash from players due to their misuse of the Micro Transaction Loot Box system, that gave players that invested into the system game play advantages over players that didn't spend money on it. These advantages were things such as weapons that were more powerful and power-ups that made the player more powerful. Items could also be purchased with in-game currency that players could earn by just playing the game, but it was calculated that players would have to play the game for over 40 hours to get the credits to unlock and play as characters such as Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker as credits were earned on how long the player played the game for, not how skilled the player was. Journalists and reviewers that received the game early heavily criticised the reward system, where the player's performance in online matches would not effect the items they would receive as rewards.
Reddit user, TheHotterPotato discovered that it would take 40 hours for the player to unlock the heroes, when he analysed the time he spent playing the game. He completed every challenge in the game, and recorded how much of the in game currency he received.
EA's community team responded to the claims on Reddit, when a player complained that the hero characters were still blocked after they purchased the £80 special edition of the game. They claimed that the reason for the extended playtime needed to unlock the hero characters was for the player to feel 'pride and accomplishment' when they finally unlocked them. The post on Reddit is the most down voted post in the websites history, with other 667,000 down votes. Users on Reddit responded to EA, with some noting that they have cancelled their pre-order of the game and boycotting all EA products until the problem is resolved.
EA's Reddit Post
News sites reported on the story, warning people of the nature of EA's actions. News outlets also warned parents to monitor their children's activity on games that include micro transactions, not only Star Wars Battlefront.
The day before the full release of the game, EA removed all micro transactions from the game, saying that they will improve and re-introduce the system at a later date. The poor social media reception and press coverage of the controversy caused EA's stock price to drop by 2.5%. Wall Street analysts lowered their expectations for the games financial prospect. By the end of November 2017, EA had lost $3 billion in stock value.
Two days before the release of the game, the Belgian gambling regulator announced that they were investigating the game, to determine wether the loot box system constituted unregulated gambling. In response, EA claimed that their Loot Boxes do not constitute gambling. Koen Geens, Belgium's Minister of Justice said that if loot boxes violate gambling laws, he would start banning loot boxes in any future games sold in the entire European Union. Chris Lee, a member of the Hawaii house of representatives called Battlefront 2 an 'online casino designed to trap little kids' and planned to ban such practises in the state of Hawaii. Australian authorities are investigating EA's use of the system.
The game was released on the 17th of November 2017. The game had mixed and average reviews, with people contributing some of the bad reviews to people review bombing it due to the controversy. On metacritic, the game received a 1/10 based on 7821 user ratings. Many reviews praised the multiplayer mode on the game, but criticised EA's use of the loot box system. The game failed to reach it sales target, selling 9 million out of the expected 10 million copies, selling less than its predecessor in 2015, which sold 15 million copies. The sales failure was attributed to people either canceling their pre-order or boycotting the game over the controversy. The revenue EA expected to make from the game was also much lower than expected, due to the removal of micro transactions during the game's first few months.
In April 2018, EA restored the loot box system on Battlefront 2, making the items in the loot boxes completely cosmetic items, which granted the player no advantage over other players who had not purchased the loot boxes.
SOURCES:
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Battlefront_II_(2017_video_game)
Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/seriously_i_paid_80_to_have_vader_locked/
bottom of page