MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The Star Wars Battlefront II loot box controversy is just not going away for EA.
Despite having already once revised the game’s loot box system, the vocal internet masses remain outraged. So much so, in fact, that a response from EA on Reddit defending its design has become the most downvoted post on Reddit ever, currently sitting at a whopping 153k downvotes – PCGamesN reckons the previous record holder had only 24.2k downvotes.
The number is rapidly climbing, too.
“The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes,” EA said in justification for the high price of unlocking heroes such as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.
“As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.
“We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets.
Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.”
As you can imagine, the responses have been ‘colourful’.
How much of an impact this online backlash will have on actual sales of the game will be fascinating to see. There was once a time in the industry where publishers felt largely free to ignore online anger mobs, believing they represent a loud but still very minor fraction of the potential playerbase. We’ll get a better idea of whether that sentiment still holds true when the game launches worldwide this Friday (November 17th).
