And there it is: EA has officially removed in-game purchases from Star Wars Battlefront 2... For now, anyway. The title's microtransactions were taken offline not too long ago, which got people talking about what the publisher could possibly be planning. Turns out that they're going to be gone for some time.
In a statement, DICE general manager Oskar Gabrielson writes "Sorry we didn't get this right" in regards to the title's terrible loot box-based progression system. "We will now spend more time listening, adjusting, balancing and tuning," it continues. "This means the option to purchase crystals in the game is now offline, and all progression will be earned through gameplay." We're not sure that helps with the grind -- which appears to be a common complaint -- but yes, microtransactions are gone for the time being.
"The ability to purchase crystals in-game will become available at a later date, only after we've made changes to the game. We'll share more details as we work through this," the post concludes.
So, what's your take on this? Good? Too little, too late? Shoot first in the comments section below.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 50
People, don't buy the game. EA, and the other game companies, aren't going to learn anything until you stop buying any game with any type of DLC/Microtransaction/Loot Box/Whatever. Just don't. if the game isn't complete when you buy it, it's a rip off waiting to happen.
Lol everyone is still mad after it was removed. It is an amazing game that HAS NOT EVEN SHIPPED TO THOSE WITHOUT A PREORDER YET. It's not too little too late and if you are going to be that mad over something that was implemented before the game even fully came out than **** it. Stay away. I don't want you ruining my community.
Would say this is about consumer power but it's more likely to avoid problems with the European gaming commissions that are looking at loot boxes.
@Oddball007 Watch the language please!
@YummyHappyPills Actually you don't. Since they reduced the cost by 75%. Right now it takes me just a few hours to get a new hero.
Still, I find the system extremely unfair. Really good players easily manage to get Heroes and become EVEN stronger, while the losing team is then losing even quicker. Previously the Tokens were at least some kind of "match changer".
The losing team has to get the chance to use heroes far more often to make this balanced. Yesterday I had a match where the enemies constantly had 3 Jedi, while our team barely got one together, which immediately died because 3 jedi vs 1. And those 3 could rejoin again and again. It's just bullshit. No fun at all. It all feels too "elitist" in this game.
I really love the game itself, but the balancing (which also includes microtransactions) are destroying everything good in it.
They should make this game free to play with no single player mode instead.
@YummyHappyPills This is true.
I normally never buy EA games. But this is Star Wars and I am a big fan. And I liked the Beta. So I preordered. But now this is much worse than the Beta. Which reminded me again why I don't buy EA games.
@Oddball007 Yeah sure, it's the people trying to stop publishers shafting us at every opportunity that are "ruining your community", the utter corporate greed of EA has nothing to do with it at all.......
I applaud everyone, gamers and gaming journo's alike who have highlighted just how damaging these practises really are to the industry, to fundamentally change games to make them less enjoyable and more frustrating purely to make you shell out more money on simply restoring the game's balance to what it should be, on game's you've paid full price for, is not the kind of industry i ever want to see our games industry become. I really hope all this bad PR has managed to nip the problem in the bud before it becomes more prevalent, fingers crossed.
As for me, personally I’m not planning to buy the game, at least not for a while and probably never and I love Star Wars. Got my tickets for episode VIII movie preordered already. But I’m just so put off by the whole thing with BF2. But even though I am not buying, I would call this move a positive one, and a step in the right direction. The complaining we’ve been doing is making a difference. Publishers are listening and reacting to the outcry. I call that progress. I know the end of this tale is not yet told, and EA will probably do something else horrible to the game to keep the sum of their poor decisions in balance. Probably will have something equally disastrous like having Jar Jar Binks be the most powerful hero in the game or something.
Thinking about this more, i wonder if Disney have had words with EA ? they can't have been happy having their brand associated with such negativity, i wouldn't be surprised if they've intervened.
lol
@tatsumi What's unfair about good players being rewarded for playing good? It's not unfair that the better team is winning.
@optic_efun11 There is a difference between good players being rewarded like they are in Overwatch and good player rewarded in BF2.
The balance is not there in BF2. Good players get too many credits too quickly and people who may be good but struggle as a team are ultra slow. I don't say they shouldn't get awarded. I say the balance is very bad. Also Jedi are extremely strong. Having 2-3 of them is just horror.
Dear Disney,
Please pull the plug on EA and let someone else have a shot at Star Wars. EA is an absolute embarrassment and is dragging the Star Wars brand through the media mud.
It’s a trap. Activision delayed their micro transactions for WW2 while they fix the game issues and it was commended, no surprise as EA and Activision copy each other all the time. I still am very wary that EA will keep its promise to adjust the game. I feel that this is just a ploy to get people to buy the game tomorrow and the only purpose of this delay is to give people a head start to advance in the game before the people who buy micro transactions arrive.
@IceClimbers You beat me to it! I scrolled down the comments reading every one of them to make sure I could post that, but you beat me by a mile.
Well done!
@Toadie
They did! This all happened a few hours after The CEO of Disney had a friendly chat with the CEO of EA
Wouldn't trust them as far as I could thrown them.
I sold my soul and bought a physical copy 3 days ago. It really is a great game. I am not a very good pvp player but haven't felt disadvantaged and have been steadily leveling up and crafting better cards.
DICE worked very hard on this game - very polished, lots of content and very fun. EA is always going to try and mess up our lives - I applaud everyone that stood up against it. This should also set a precedent for when other games do similar things and embolden the masses to stand up and protest.
Don't fall for it people.
They are just trying to get the game to as many people as possible, before they turn it into a microtransaction riddled grind fest.
Probably doesn't help that Belgian and Dutch gaming commissions have now officially launched an investigation into loot boxes in gaming.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-11-16-star-wars-battlefront-2-loot-boxes-investigated-by-belgian-gaming-commission
Major poor man's Splatoon. They just want to get a bunch of sales before they turn them back on.
Maybe it'll end up being less pay to win, but it's still gonna be pay to win at the end of the day. Don't buy it.
This a just a blatant attempt at manipulating upcoming review scores and getting a few good headlines before the Christmas period. The second the game is selling and the controversy has abated they’ll reintroduce loot boxes.
Good news for consumers, well done all. This launch has been a fiasco for EA. The cynical part of me thinks this is an attempt to halt day one sale disappointments and that they have now completely unbalanced the game but let's not say that this isn't all good news.
Both Overwatch & Battlefront 2 are under investigation in Belgian to see of Loot Boxes are gambling, because both these games are being sold to kids. If it is gambling they'll be fined & the game will be taken off the shelves in Belgian, so it's strange EA only now takes out Loot Boxes only when they are under investigation.
To be fair this has been coming for a long time FIFA has been like this for years with FUT so if anything these games are tiny in comparison to FIFA.
With regards to Disney stepping in I wouldn't be at all surprised if Disney did step in they could eat EA up and spit out bones they are a proper behemoth in comparison to EA.
Please, fellow gamers: dont buy it!
We need to take a stand as the whole industry is watching!
„People are counting on us. The galaxy is counting on us.“
I just hope the movie is good by this point
..but what about the £160 I've spent on loot crates after paying full price on my pre-order??!?
Oddball007 who posted above is a brand new account that's just been created, I'll give you one guess who s/he works for. This desperation is something else.
@Toadie https://www.resetera.com/threads/disney-ceo-bob-iger-spoke-to-ea-ceo-andrew-wilson-today.6609/
The microtransactions are gone for now, but apparently they think it's a balancing issue, so they will come back whenever they ''figure it out''.
Of course with several countries looking into Battlefront 2 and online gambling, the negative press, the low review scores and the entire PR mess that was the Reddit AMA, Disney had to react in some way, shape or form. And I feel that this is more a response to Disney than to the fans. They've been defending this for a while, but suddenly change heart when they're supposedly contacted by Disney...
We shall see, but hey, at least it shows that if you voice your opinion, you can make a difference. And hopefully this will scare other developers off in the future. Maybe...
"We will now spend more time listening"
As they force people to grind! Oh dear they are totally missing half of the point!
Will other developers please take notice now? It's time the gaming community which spends billions buying and supporting this hobby stop being treated like muppets. Yep mts work on mobile but those games are free to start of with. If you want gamers to participate in your 'club' prepare to be fair. Good response from EA in all fairness but now it's a matter of waiting to see if their word stays true. Microtransaction-gate looming.
...as if millions of microtransactions suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...
@Oddball007 I wonder who could be behind this account...
You people are hilarious....
40 hours is grinding?! What exactly do you want, games that pander to your laziness? There are plenty of hit n go games out there, so maybe collecting games with "grind" are not for you mateys.
Go play Peggle or something, love that game.
Edit: Oh no, I made sense on the internet, bad rep incoming.
@xX_RiscazZ_Xx it's not grinding that's the issue here, the issue is they are purposely making the grinding so long a tedious that it's not worth it, they then add a incentive to speed it up that you have to pay extra for, enticing the player to spend real money in order to get the full experience in a game you have already paid £60+ for at a realistic rate
grinding is fine as long as it's fun and at least plausible to do in a decent amount of time but this system is designed to fleece you for as much money as possible and that is damn right dirty and has NO place in AAA titles
if games are becoming more expensive to make which is the main excuse we keep hearing for this then increase the price of the games, i and many others wouldn't mind paying more for a product if it meant NOT having to deal with this kind of practise
@Oddball007 well the way it's going you'll be playing with about three other people so Yeah, enjoy being destroyed on the battlefield by one Looty Boi.
oh Ok i believe it . noway EA remove this things , maybe for now they`re gone but they will come back soon as possible with other forms and changed faces.
even without that my time has much more Value . i`m not going to spend 40 hours to unlock a stupidly hero
Anyone know if they group simular lvl'd players together? So someone who has played for hours and has all great items isn't grouped or against someone in hour 2.
I can respect that, but I'll be curious to know what they are going to do to replace it.
Must have been an interesting phone call between head of Disney and the head of EA.
Probably went something like this
"CAN YOU PLEASE UNF*CK OUR BRAND NOW!!!!!"
EA cancelled a single player, linear, Star Wars game and sacked a studio for this type of monitization scheme. I’m not buying into their PR BS.
The game looks fantastic. I’m still not convinced by this move to buying it but I’m looking forward to watching streams of others playing it to enjoy the view
The game was balanced around microtransactions, turning them off solves nothing. If nothing else it is entertaining to watch one of these schemes at last get the hate it deserves. Now let's see what the Belgians and Dutch find in their investigation into these monetisation practices...
It didn't scare them until Wall Street freaked out. Now this is a salvage operation.
From Eurogamer:
"According to Venturebeat sources, Disney boss Bob Iger phoned EA boss Andrew Wilson shortly before the U-turn was announced to discuss Star Wars Battlefront 2. Oh, to be a fly on the wall of that conversation."
Disney laid down the law as the negative feedback will start to impact the Last Jedi
@Fight_Teza_Fight more like they're the big reason EA is dialing back for a while to begin with. As long as statistics reflect the existence of people who pay for this stuff, internet nerd outcry doesn't promise dent-making losses; same goes for Disney's "family image" weighed against it, since many parents don't sneeeze from microtransactions as long as their kids don't know their credit card data. Like I said before, this whole clamour just gave the game more publicity while its premise of "big companies being greedy" won't shock a single soul in the age where TV shopping (with its proverbial bloated prices and zero warranty) has thrived for decades. ¯(ツ)/¯
Although I don't expect the investigations to go far either. If microtransactions matched the recognized gambling patterns, they would have been shot down long ago, but outside the "real world trading" scenarios (which are end user practices and never condoned by publishers anyway), there's no money to make bets on. Paywalls basically fly past the radar as artificially compelling DLC, and one could always appeal the grind to court. Unless there's a case to be made of false advertising or something, not enjoying the base game in the current state will likely be a first world problem in the legislation's eyes.
Microtransactions will only go if EA and other companies consider them clearly unprofitable. Then again, let's not fool ourselves, the industry will find other ways to vacuum extra money as long as video games are a business and as long as the market (and the hype spurred by hardware makers in the graphics arms race) keeps demanding AAA games costing a couple lifetime debts to make yet still sold at $60 apiece like decades ago. We're still living in the world where people struggle to write "indie games" without adding derogatory quotation marks around 'games'. No one can chastise corporate greed without simultaneously acknowledging customer greed - both kinds are much older than video games, after all. And we fans, due to our inherently parasitic nature, aren't even quite in a position to discuss greed in the first place. :V
As someone who is mostly a bystander in all of this, it's fascinating to see how low EA can go and what nonsense they'll pull next. It's a never-ending train-wreck. In slow-motion.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...