Hitting EA Where It Hurts

For those of you who haven't been following the story, EA got the market equivalent of a ball tap over their shady business practices.

It started with the introduction of purchasable loot boxes in the beta for Battlefront 2, the new Star Wars title that EA has now released. Loot boxes, and methods for "paying to win" generally, have been very poorly received by the gaming community and customers across the world. Just about no one likes them, and no one is going to go to bat to defend the practice now called micro transactions.

Micro transactions are a type of business practice that transforms a standalone game into a revenue-generation machine. They're small purchases that can be made in-game with real currency, usually for items or in-game currency. Although some micro transaction schemes are particularly egregious (Activision's pair-players-with-experts-so-they-lose-and-want-to-buy scheme and Fallout 4's Creation Workshop, where you have to buy in-game currency in blocks instead of individually, come to mind), they're all considered an intrusion into the game experience. Some people may well want to spend dollars on unlocking real gear. The problem becomes when games are geared toward that end, or when unlocking these items otherwise becomes practically impossible.

Enter Battlefront 2. For starters, several hero units that players can use in a match were locked from the start, requiring in-game "credits" to unlock them. This, in and of itself, is not the worst thing in the world, given one can earn credits for every match they play. However, the price tag was outrageous. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader required 60,000 credits to unlock. Given the average match yields just over 200 credits, and matches last around 10-15 minutes, you can see the unbelievably enormous time sink required just to unlock one of them.

Users took to social media to decry what was going on. EA, in its usual lack of self-awareness, tried to defend the practice, which led to its reddit comment becoming the most downvoted post in reddit's history.

^{Screencap courtesy of Reddit.com}
Following the enormous backlash from its customers, EA suspended micro transactions altogether right as the game launched, and it reduced the price of hero characters significantly. Predictably, EA's panicked response cost the publisher more than just its reputation, which it seems happy to destroy. EA's stock price dropped about 3% following their announcement and the release of Battlefront 2.

Granted, this is minor. This wasn't an enormous blow. But it was a proverbial ball tap to a company that has made it an overriding goal to shit on its customers at every possible opportunity.

EA is on notice. It's a good step forward, and I hope that the pressure stays on them.

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