Electronic Arts
So are you thinking about purchasing Electronic Arts’ new Star Wars: Battlefront II game? The trailers and gameplay videos that we’ve seen so far for the game look utterly amazing.
You know what else is utterly amazing? How much the gamers that use Reddit HATE Electronic Arts.
Then again, when you release a game called Star Wars: Battlefront II, and you charge up to $80 or so for it, people kind of expect that some of the more important characters like, say, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker will come with it. Alas, they do not.
However, what makes the gamers even more angry is that fact that you can acquire these characters, but at a very, very steep cost.
According to Polygon, Skywalker and Vader’s costs are currently 60,000 credits, which you earn while actually playing the game.
Writing on Reddit’s Battlefront subreddit, user TheHotterPotato analyzed 21 matches in Galactic Assault (the all-purpose multiplayer fight spanning multiple eras and scenarios), and how many credits were earned, in sum and on average. TheHotterPotato arrived at an average of 250 credits per 10-minute match.
You don’t have to be a genius to do the math and figure out that at that rate it will take you 40 hours of multiplayer gameplay before you can even think about playing as these characters.
Naturally, when they discovered this, gamers felt like they were being scammed by EA and went nuts.
So what did Electronic Arts do? They tried to justify the 40-hour requirement in a comment on Reddit.
The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.
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.
And that’s how you get a Reddit comment downvoted to a score, as of this writing, -420,000 and still spiraling downward.
It’s also how you get comments like these…
“Oh come on, everyone and their mother knows that this is to force players to grind for a piece of a product they should have already gotten when they purchased the game in order to get us to buy lootboxes. Not even a 5 year old would fall for this.”
“I paid $60 for BF2. The hours I worked at my job to get the $60 for this game already gave me all the sense of pride and accomplishment I need.”
“Wow that is a horrible response. And here I thought EA should be well versed in issuing statements regarding anti consumer practices but this badly worded PR speak word salad has proven me wrong. Next time you do something scummy just save yourself some time and just tell us to f*ck off instead of this disingenious horsesh*t.”
“I recognize that you are a front-line level employee in a multi-billion dollar entertainment conglomerate, and that you likely have no say in the message you’re giving. Likely, your manager and your manager’s manager don’t have the right to call into question the strategic business decisions that get made by the highest levels of the company.
So please understand that when I say this, I am not saying it to you. I feel for you, because you have a lonely, thankless job, trying to do your best to rehabilitate the public face of an incredibly hated company. I don’t resent you at all, I don’t resent your manager, and I respect the person behind the keyboard.
But f*ck EA. I don’t buy your games anymore. I am beyond insulted by the microtransaction/season pass/greedy-lazy business model that your company has perfected over the past decade or so. It’s disgusting. It’s a perversion of gaming. The suits that control your company aren’t interested in anything but pushing out shitty incremental upgrades to keep us wasting money on sh*t, and on getting a small percentage of addicts to bankrupt themselves $5 at a time.
It’s f*cking deviant. It’s absolutely irresponsible. It’s disgusting. F*ck you guys. I am not buying another EA game again until the upper levels of business management at EA are f*cking stripped down and replaced by people who aim to make fair profits by producing great content again. EA used to do that, but it’s been years, and I’m done pretending. Every new game that I’ve bought for the past year, I’ve checked to make sure that EA was not involved before paying. I plan to continue that until serious changes are made.
You can’t fix this. I know your bosses want you to, but you can’t. Because somewhere, there’s a CEO, or President of Game Design, or a f*cking board of directors who have decided to produce shitty games loaded with dopamine drops to leech money rather than earn it. That person has ruined your company’s goodwill.”
Ouch.
On the bright side, Electronic Arts now officially owns the record for the most downvoted comment in the history of Reddit. Nice job, EA!