companyman
patreon
Help - Video Game Question Follow-Up
🕑 Added 2020-09-17 21:59:52 +0000 UTCThanks to everyone answering my last post. I've been reading them and using them to write this segment of the video. I'd be really helpful if you could read through the paragraph really quick and tell me if I should change or add anything important. Keep in mind I don't want to get too specific and alienate any viewers that don't really play video games, just want to convey the general idea of the backlash and how it seemed shady and unfair to the community. Here it is:
The next reason is probably the most relevant one today, microtransactions and loot boxes. It’s essentially when you have to pay real money to unlock stuff within a game and EA has been infamous for including these all over the place. It’s an effective way for EA to keep a stream of revenue coming in long after the game is sold but it doesn’t go over well with the players. I’m sure many of you know about these all too well so I’ll just skip to the big one. Star Wars Battlefront II. Back in 2017, before it was even officially released, it received unprecedented backlash from the gaming community because the loot box system within the game was designed to give the player significant gameplay advantages. Essentially making it pay to win, and nobody wants that. You would pay $60 for the game upfront, and then if you refused to pay more money you’d be at a disadvantage compared to other players. On top of that, major, desirable characters such Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader had to be unlocked by either playing the game something 40 hours or by buying these loot boxes. The whole thing felt very shady, it seemed like EA was more concerned with extracting money from the players rather than delivering a fun experience. They said it was all in place to, “provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking heros”, but that didn’t go over well either. It was actually said in Reddit comment that soon became Reddit’s most downvoted comment of all time.
Comments
Electronic Arts. Depending on what the video will detail, this company may be one worth a second video later. It has a very long history involving scandals beyond Star Wars Battlefront II. I'd say more, but our fellows here have done well to answer questions about this latter subject thus far.
Brian Hortin
No worries. I’m guessing you’ve come across this from their earnings reports, but EA definitely has not stopped with the heavy use of microtransactions and loot boxes in their games since the Star Wars controversy. They just stopped doing it in the non-sports games. In their sports games it is a huge source of revenue and there is a lawsuit about it right now too. This article lists the earnings from their Ultimate Team mode. https://www.sportbible.com/football/gaming-news-the-figures-behind-ea-sports-net-revenue-from-ultimate-team-20200521
mehdi
EA sport is probably the most hated game development company , they don't care about there user experience or opinion ,i used to play ea sport fifa which is a football game and they make you pay for every little extra that kind supposed to be on the game this is one of there biggest game. and on every new version they have a new extra pay to play ,and it's rating is went from 3.4 in fifa19 wich already low to 1.9 rating, ea don't care because they know that there costumer are going to buy
Company Man
That would be an interesting thing to include but this video is already running long and it don't think it's something I could mention quickly.
Brian Hortin
Sounds great. I’m not sure of the scope that you are going for; it may be worth mentioning that EA has a bit of a history of trying to squeeze extra money out of players. They were one of the companies that implemented the controversial online pass system around a decade ago. Basically a code printed on a piece of paper that was inside the game box was needed to access any online play for a game that you bought. This disincentivized buying used games since if you bought a used copy of a game you would then have to pay EA an extra $10 directly for an online pass to unlock to online features. This system was discontinued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_pass
Company Man
You're right, that is a good part to include. I've attached this to the end of it: Disney is the owner of Star Wars, and even they took issue with it. The necessity of those loot boxes was promoting gambling to the players and just the whole backlash was turning into negative publicity for Star Wars. It looks like that may have been the final straw that made EA fix some of those issues with the game.
milkshake
everything checks out :)
