EA Believes Loot Boxes Are Ethical, Deems Them Surprise Mechanics

“I don’t think we can agree to say that games are addictive,” she said. “I would tell you that Electronic Arts already is a very responsible company.”

Did...did her head explode or lightning strike her after that incredibly blatant lie?

L to the O to the L. What's that spell? You have a random chance to find out for $4.99.

I agree with Jim Sterling - Watch his video but be warned its NSFW. It doesn't matter if you change the name, its still a Loot Box - EA use the term themselves and rebranding something to mislead people doesn't detract from the fact that these are 'loot boxes'

@kyleforrester87 It depends droprates of less then 1% with rare stuff on Fifa is for me personally is. Adding pay to win into a game with lootboxes for me too. EA is the company that brought the worst of the worst this generation in combination with Activision Blizzard. And i find it tasteless too compare your stuff too Kids candy and toys which you can trade and has a value.

Surprise mechanics! You bare faced liars!!! Comparing them to Kinder Eggs! Just F*** **f you scumbags. The sooner these things are made illegal the better.

Loot boxes are gambling plain and simple, of course EA bosses don't want to say as much because the easy money from these predatory business practices would have to stop and he wouldn't get such big bonuses

@get2sammyb I would strongly disagree with the ultimate team stuff. They target kids as to be competitive you need a messi or Ronaldo so it encourages people to buy packs. Even esports players have said they have to spend £200 plus just to compete. If all players were equal it would be fine but it’s blatant pay 2 win and fifa is an all age game

Love how Gamers do not want to take responsibility for buying the crap in the first place.

If EA is a pusher... Google and Apple are the freaking Cartels

I think we've hit on a magic formula for the world's most annoying article here.

EA + Loot boxes + PR speak + a picture of Ronaldo = despair

@Gremio108 + the first comment by @kyleforrester87 and you have a winning formula for the most annoying article. 😂

"People enjoy surprises"

Lets all mail a gift box full of turds to EA. People like surprises.

@Agramonte I think most gamers do take responsibility and don't buy them. I've bought several FIFAs since its introduction and never spent a single penny on FUT. A lot of people only see the "1%" in "less than 1% chance" and think they've got a 1 in 100 chance of getting something great; but "less than 1%" still allows massive odds... is it 0.1%? 0.01%? 0.001%? 0.0000001%?

The problem you have is the eSports types and similar "whale" players who will spend absolute fortunes on this crap. As long as they exist, we'll be hard pushed to get rid of it. We'd need everyone to stop buying, and many simply won't.

I hate the thought of government intervention, as they usually bring the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a walnut, but it may be the only way; we just have to hope they can outdo themselves and perform a surgical strike, so the fallout doesn't have unintended/unwanted victims.

I personally don't mind the idea MTX in games, if (a) they don't unfairly affect gameplay, and (b) you know what you're getting when you pay. If it's going to be random stuff, it should at least be from a pool of things with equal in-game value.

in what world is a FIFA pack the same as a kinder egg?! that's the best analogy she could come up with?

maybe EA will actually start making more games if their cash cow gets ripped from under them. since earning billions in mtxns, their investment in development has gone down.

I'm 8 feet tall, with the body of Zeus and and a Viking's beard, and I have a harem of 700 women from 8 continents.

I just showed more honesty than EA have.

I still feel like the only person on earth who doesn't completely flip their lid about loot boxes. I mean, they don't impact anything. EA just happens to be one of those publishers that makes them mandatory.

Having recently gotten into a mobile gacha game though, I do understand how people can get sucked into these games, especially the more exploitative ones. I think a government crackdown on some of the biggest offenders might be a good idea. The game I play is very generous and I still ended up throwing about 70 dollars into it when a specific banner came up. I can only imagine how much someone might spend on one of the more scummier publishers like EA, who have a knack for making the loot boxes mandatory in some way.

I play Madden Ultimate Team and I used to pay real money for the packs. I now earn and use the in game currenacy.

I feel much better for it too.

That's a lot of PR spin. I don't think loot boxes are fun. Making in game items harder to get by free methods and then getting customers to pay for a chance at acquiring something good is not fun to me.

No no no. They’re so bad. Game breaking often times. No game should have them.

I thought that buying FIFA coins on online sites at discount were banned now? Yet chesnoid gamer always advertises it

Cowards.

They are deliberately designed to trigger reward and addiction reactions in the brain. But I guess it's okay now because they're not "loot boxes" any more.

She could be a Republican.

Loot boxes are bad and EA are the worst for them. I think because of their financial success on mobile platforms, Simpsons tapped out anyone?

I've known people whose lives have been stuck in a vicious cycle which is either due to or exacerbated by the presence of FIFA coins in their lives. I've never played it so I don't know the exact details of the game but I know the type of game from experience.

It is true that some people can moderate their lives and spending appropriately. It's also true that some people have so much money that the damage mtx/loot boxes cause is just psychological rather than also taking a financial toll. It is unfortunately true that games of these nature deliberately target the vulnerable, whether that be a child or young adult, disabled or people in poor circumstances (unsatisfying job, rough relationship, difficult times in general). People get their positive experience from these sorts of games, not realising that it is only exacerbating the personal issues that drove them to it in the first place.

Unfortunately gambling can't be banned, as countries with overturned laws have demonstrated. But like smoking, all adverts for gambling or games that even whiff of lootboxes should be banned outright. It is lame for the people who work so hard on these games, as they are not seeing all the dividends but I would like it if the CEOs and middle men were not pocketing the hard earned cash of the consumer using sleazy underhanded tactics.

Unfortunately I also doubt the UK will do jack all about this, especially the Tories as they are in the pockets of these sorts of businessmen.

Loot boxes are much like packs of trading cards. False rarity created to make money. It's a practice that goes back decades.

It goes back because it works. People do like opening that pack and finding the card the want, or opening the loot box and getting the skin they want.

But do we honestly like having to buy things this way? For me, no. When I played Pokemon and other card games I quickly gave up on buying booster packs. I would just order the cards I needed online or buy them individually in stores. And I hated having to do that almost as much as buying an entire box, opening 30 packs and not getting the cards I needed to build my deck.

It was largely for that reason I quit card games aside from Hearthstone. Because at least HS allows you to turn unwanted cards into a currency you can use to obtain the ones you need.

I don't like packs of trading cards as a system and I don't like loot boxes. But they persist because we are not given an alternative. Companies who use them do not provide an alternative. I can't go to Pokemon's website and order a Charizard. I can't go to Blizzard and order a golden Sylvanas, I can't go to EA and just buy the players I want. Even though they are all in the game. I can't buy them or unlock them. They force us to use their randomized system.

Because it benefits them. And since it is profitable, they aren't going to stop unless we force them to by law.

While I've never payed for a single lootbox in my life and I definitely would like them out of my games, the people that buy them are just as guilty, unless you're a kid and don't know any better. The majority of people just aren't that bright, this is why things are the way they are.

Wow, I don't even EA.....

@BAMozzy haha I love that video, EA are scumbags at times and they know exactly what they are doing especially when making a big song and dance about Star Wars not having them.

Have you seen the Angry Joe video? Epic are incredibly shady and don't even understand basic words such as frequent and try to claim they don't make money. Liars, liars, liars

@AdamNovice I've seen the Epic part, they looked like a couple of kids who'd just been caught shoplifting

Anyone who support a loot boxes is responsible for gaming going downhill....

Maybe they should speak to the Square Enix Ethics department and see if they can reduce the chest sizes for them.

I don't like microtransactions but at the same time, I don't think them unethical. Loot boxes veer more towards that though as they do introduce gambling mechanics. All gambling are 'surprise' mechanics.

The more annoying though is the utter rubbish that they don't call them lootboxes. They literally sent out tweets calling them that. That means that if they are trying to rebrand then the term is toxic. If it is toxic then why?

@get2sammyb this gabe me an idea: I know it’s a lot of work, but would you consider writing a Feature article about the rise of MTX’s and loot boxes?
It occurred to me while I tried and failed to remember when and where this craze started.
One crazy thing of living in these days of being constantly bombarded by all kinds of information is that everything seems to have been the way it is for waaaaay longer than it actually is.
It’s hard to think of the games industry without this bullcrap (unfortunately), but it wasn’t like that up until a few years ago.