After the Battlefront 2 Scandal, EA UFC 3's Beta Sounds Like a Disaster

EA greed know no bounds..

Is this an open beta???

As a cheesehead, your example of Aaron Rodgers made me laugh.
Kudos, Sammy.

Anyways, it sounds like EA didn't learn their lesson from the whole Battlefront 2 adventure. Maybe, and it's a pretty big maybe, they'll change it by the time the game releases.

EA I love your failure, please never change...but also please stop making star wars games.

It's comical at this point. What a stupid f**king company.

I mean, I get EA's corporate logic. They're a big company, and "need" a big, steady income to subsist on. Surprise hits are great, but lightning in a bottle is by its nature impossible to reliably and repeatedly manufacture, and it's expensive and wasteful to spin up all new games, mechanics, and assets for one-shot income. Much more consistent and efficient to capture an audience and keep them paying out repeatedly for games-as-a-service by incrementing in-game numbers and selling upgrades instead of new experiences.

It's reflective of the early human societal evolution from hunter-gatherers to farmers, but this time it's the players who're the milk cows. It's an aggressive stance to the market as a whole, as monopolizing a player's time for months or years prevents them from playing other companies' games while they're being milked. Hopefully it never goes so far as to completely clearcut the industry's creative woodlands, but it's tough to see any path to undo the shift while capitalism is still the law of the land. With few exceptions, humanity's never really looked back once it started farming its food instead of praying to the god of the hunt.

EA has turned themselves into a joke after the passed few months

Oh EA it seems i will be never ever getting one of your games ever FY EA.

I wish EA didn't suck.

@Deadlyblack Sammys ok for a Brit, even he knew the Eli Manning benching was ridiculous.

I don't think UFC is going to call up EA like Disney did complaining about gambling affecting innocent children.

It may all be the same lootbox nonsense to gamers but there's a big difference between a game that could be marketed to kids like Star Wars and an MMA game which I'm assuming will be violent.

Look who’s going to have honor of “Worst company in America” for the 3rd year in a row.

I’m wracking my brain to thInk of the last EA game I bought other than a $5 copy of 2015 Battlefront.

And people still want EA Access????

@rjejr

There is a surprising amount of Brits who follow the NFL. I encourage it!

And as long as they all hate the New England Deflate-triots as much as I do, they are cool with me!

@Deadlyblack fellow cheesehead here and what happened to our season still as me sore.

I am at a loss for words... They just lost 3 billion in stock losses, terrible sales from Battlefront 2 boycotts, rick losing their Star Wars license and we are in the midst of loot boxes being investigated as a form of Gambling. On top of this, EA is in the spotlight for everything it does. It has made on embarrassing blunder after another, all being posted about online. SO with all this going on, what do they do?!? Release another game with an even more aggressive loot box system!

I do not even know what to say... I am really at a loss for words.
It is like being in a defendant in court on the charge of domestic abuse and hitting your wife in front of the Judge.

I swear, the exec (every last one of them) Need to be fired. They are literally in their own little world and have no grasp on reality. They are not fit to run a lemonade stand.

Well when you make like 800 million from FIFA FUT alone why not, of course it's a disgrace as it resets every 12 months, FUT should be separate and it shouldn't wipe out your team every year, but then all that extra cash is gone for the shareholders. No need to spout on about rising development costs as it simply isn't true.

@Fath
Exactly!!!, a "big" company "need" "money" to work, and the more expenses they have, they will need more income to have enough to survive and of course, to have the gains that will obviously give they more opportunities for growth, especially to make more games .
And now, We, well, we want good / great games and at an affordable price, however, the products have become more expensive (and 60 dollars already seems that they are not enough), well, then, here enter the "infamous" models for get more money, and if we allow it, they will continue, since the companies already want "safe money"

However, When a company abuses to obtain more money and users / consumers want all products / games to be cheaper, Well, We have a big problem...

Vote with your wallet. Apparently EA have already lost over $3billion in stock value following the SWB2 fiasco.
http://www.pcgamer.com/electronic-arts-stock-sheds-3-billion-in-value-after-battlefront-2/

Loot boxes or not, their games no longer interest me.
Unravel 2 will likely be the only exception, but EA will probably ruin that too.

EA is terrible as always, I really hope many people just stop buying their games. On a side note, whatever happened to a $60 game just being a $60 game?! You have micro transactions to unlock content you paid $60 for already or they want you to pay an extra $25+ for season pass dlc that expands on the story. Its like paying for a book with some pages missing and the bookstore wants more money for those so you get the complete story. I just want to be able to buy a AAA game again that doesn’t lock me out of anything for $60.

Well I saw a quote from the CFO this week and he said something like 'Some gamers have time but not much money and some gamers have money but not much time so we want to cater for both'.

Basically they aren't stopping with this until they find the magic formula that doesn't get people up in arms but still makes them a fudge ton of money.

@Tebok Because they know very well that most of the audience for their sports games are casual players who aren't even aware of these practices. They got away with it in FIFA for years, so I don't see why this wouldn't work.

@SakuraHaruka That's absolutely bollocks. That's what people defending these companies say, but they have no numbers to back it up. EA spends less on actual game development every year. They spend a lot less on game development than they did ten years ago. And that was before micro-transactions were even a thing, and they were doing completely fine back then as well. So now they're spending a lot less on development and they're doubling down on the loot boxes. It's just greed at this point.

After the success of GTA online & Destiny companies are looking at this model to make big profits. There may well be a middle ground (Warframe gets the balance right imo) but EA's heavy handed approach is killing gaming. If they do implement this model in the final release I hope people refuse to buy it & show them that the gamers need to be listened too.

..I suspect this whole tranche of releases were designed under the same microtransaction ethos - every release having them fully baked in... obviously EA didn't expect the BF2 fallout... either way... it's still pretty scummy, and I do think BF2 will be my last EA purchase... I think it's time to make a stand against them.... there are far more worthy games, developers and publishers out there...

@Fight_Teza_Fight they're going to introduce yarn boxes to Unravel 2. You get a random length yarn that probably won't be long enough to complete the level. To proceed you need to grind over and over again or buy a pack of yarn cards which come with 3 randomly selected pieces. True story.

@get2sammyb You didn't reference the NHL series Thankfully, NHL isn't as bad as what I've read about BF2 or seen in NFS: PayEABack.

Wow...

@Mergatro1d Their excuse will be 'People don't have the time to grind for yarn. We want players to have a sense of pride and accomplishment.'

ell thats another EA game I wont be buying

@Octane
First: Beware of expressions, ok?
Ok, Well, In some part, It's true, with some games EA spend lot less because in some, they repeat the same models (FIFA and most of its sports games are the example in this); But, Really, Really you believe that nowaday, Make Great games is cheap?, If that were true, we would have many, but many AAA games every year, and what I see, that's not true, especially when you see the credits in every "big" game, I don't believe that with ALL that people that worked in those games, work "25 hours for day" and for free, right?

Now, I don't defend EA, they arrived to that "bad" point for greed and it's problem that they must fix and I speak to you as someone who has been a Fan of EA; But in a point that I said it's true I will repeat again, the games (AAA especially) aren't cheap (For both, Companies and us), and we must understand this.

really did EA learn NOTHING form Battlefront 2

now to be fair BF2 was only just released so this game has probably been in the works for a while before the **** hit the fan but you would think EA would at least TRY to do something with the system even if they just turned it off like in BF2

@SakuraHaruka no offence but the whole "games are expensive to make" thing is bull, now i'm not saying they don't cost a lot of money because they do BUT if a game costs say $60 million like EA says a AAA game can cost NOW that game sells as $60 so IF all the money went to the developers that's means 1 million sales and it's made its money back, now of course with physical you could probably cut that down to half AT BEST the money coming back due to production shipping and advertising (assuming that ISN'T covered in the initial 60 million cost) that would mean 2 million units would be all that's needed to make it's money back, (this doesn't include digital sales where shipping and production are not an issue)

now IF said game sold 4 million units (with BF2 being Star Wars that is easily achievable) that would mean it had a 200% profit and are you telling me a 200% profit isn't making money?

this was just simple numbers of course but the point stands, 3 to 4 million sales is more than enough for a AAA like Battlefront or FIFA or any annual game that uses already made assest to make it money back AND make a profit (of course there ARE exceptions to this) so EA stuffing the game full of micrtransactions and making it extremely hard to progress with out loot boxes thus encouraging you to buy them is just pure greed

@NYJetsfan123 Well if you're in the UK and there is one team you are going to hate, the one representing the US revolution big middle finger to your country is probably the one.

@SakuraHaruka No, we still wouldn't have many AAA games a year, because statistics show us that doubling down on micro-transactions in a game is cheaper and more profitable than making a completely new game. So publishers will release less games, with more micro-transactions and make more money as a result.

On top of that, you shouldn't forget that the revenue from digital games is a lot higher than it was 10 years ago. So instead of sharing their cut with the retailers, they get more per game, and I believe the attach rates for digital can be as high as 50% these days. Plus they save on manufacturing, shipping and storage. That's another easy and simple way to make more money without changing they way they develop games.

I highly encourage you, or anyone else, to watch this video. I've time-stamped the important part for this discussion.

This makes me happy I skipped BF2 and with that the only EA game I cared about.

EA games owned on PS3: 23
EA games owned on PS4: 4

their development strategy clearly works out well for my wallet.

Gamers need to start taking responsibility instead of blaming big companies, I mean if you buy a £60 game RRP and then go on to spend hundreds of pounds on loot boxes what did you expect? It was the same with DLC, these big bad gaming companies selling me a game than making me buy DLC, season passes, time saver's etc. You spent thousands & in the case of loot boxes billions, you reap what you sow.

Please die, come on please die now !! You can dot it, why don't you just DIE ???
Oh. Sorry, wasn't talking violently of EA, but of this new habbit in videogames. COME ON ! WE ALREADY HAVE PAID THE DAMN GAME, SO WHY DO YOU WANT TO CHARGE US MORE ?

@Octane , @FullbringIchigo
Well, Really are good points that you mention (and also that we are taking this discussion well)
No problem and Don't worry, as I mentioned, I am fan (almost) of EA, especially for these IP: Need For Speed, Burnout, Sim City and MySims/The Sims; but my last game that I bought from them was NFS Rivals; and that was almost a decent game, oh well...

But well, I don't speak for preference, XD, I speak for understand this about develoment costs in videogames, and gamer's support; well, you mention that really games aren't "very expensive", I would really like to know how much it costs, approximately, a AAA game, but, well, I believe that none of us knows for sure; but, my point for this is because, well, we know that EA is greedy and stingy; but for example, well, Platinum Games; As I see, its games are very complex, they look good visually and it seems that many people have worked in those games (I have not played them 100%, I have not seen their credits); they have shown to make games very well, nothing of greed, something that many should learn.

However, its games sell of low to decent (rarely very good), then, My question here is, well yes, they work with publishers (Nintendo, Sony, Sega), but, if its games look to not generate big profits, how they keep that great joob with these things; this really for me and many of us, it's something worrying; especially, I repeat agan, its games are great and they don't get the economic success that games as FIFA of Call of Duty have (and this part, we have some of responsability, because, about of sales and profits, Fifa>any Platinun games' game; and obviously, this is not good)
For this, is when some of us think, if by this, they end up using those bad practices, to minimize their expenses; but well, if really, also, we knew the cost for those games, but well.
I hope understand my opinion, and worries, but thanks for their comments.

EA just being EA