I, like many others completely called shenanigans with Electronic Arts pulling predatory practices in gaming, in the name of greed. Star Wars Battlefront 2 was released and boy did the online community put them in place this time! Finally awareness about E.A. and their greedy practices has gone mainstream.
Those that say “just don’t buy from them” as i’ve said before, are missing the point. This practice cannot be allowed to be continued in video gaming and calling out those who do it will make other developers and producers think twice. There is a difference between business and the kind that needs a new type of antitrust law.
Imagine the practices done by E.A. in another market to see how they are exploiting people.
Even if you are not a gamer, please watch this video(below) and rejoice to justice in gaming!
The video will make you angry, but the hosts do a great job and thanks to them, Forbes, MSNBC and other mainstream media sources as well as the Belgian gaming commission are taking action.
This kind of awareness is desperately needed, and it finally happened, when nobody thought it would.
I don’t know I think if people don’t want to grind for hours and wanna buy a loot box should be able to but once they do they get put on a special server so there not squashing the little guys
but in the future people will be used to paying for loot boxes simply because that’s how android and istore Facebook free to play mobile gaming works …cant pass a goal ? well drop 4.95 for 2 of everything a need …
I don’t especially care for microtransactions but the specific issues with Battlefront II were that:
(a) The boxes (potentially) offered in-game boosts & benefits for a multiplayer game
(b) The boxes were random
That was the killer combination. If you could directly purchase boosts then it wouldn’t be different than the “Buy three more lives only 250 coins!” nonsense in mobile gaming. If the boxes only had cosmetics then it’s just a matter of “Your choice to spend $5 for a differently colored gun, dude”. Heck, if the game was single player and had random crates with maybe a pink pistol skin or maybe 50 skill points then most people would think that it’s dumb but it wouldn’t have gotten the same backlash. But paying for a box that maybe has worthless junk and maybe has a significant boost to your competitive multiplayer game play was too much for people.
Bullshit. If gamers don’t want lootboxes and other micro-transactional bullshit, stop spending fucking money. Nothing sends a faster message. As long as gamers are willing to spend, the fuckers are going to figure out the best way to wring every last penny out of you that they can.
No, and I am a gamer, but I find it very easy to not spend money, especially on EA properties. But to those who need their shiny on day 1, thank you. Because of you, they keep making games and I can get it 12-18 months later (but still not EA) for a sawbuck or less.
I’m with you, but i have zero problems spending money on games i enjoy. Sixty dollars is ridiculously cheap for a videogame, specially the ones with long term play value.
It’s one thing to choose for oneself to not pay for the microtransactions. But people also want to play against others online, on a level playing field. And even if you don’t buy the power-ups, that guy you’re playing against might. It might be OK if their matchmaking system put people together who’d spent the same amount (including, possibly, none). Anyone want to lay bets on whether they do that?
No, THAT is bullshit. People not buying the product is not enough. There needs to be awareness about deceitful or questionable practice as well. If you have both, it will work well. Simply not buying something never works, because there is always someone who will and the hit just will not be big enough for a juggernaut like E.A. Top that with them engaging in bait and switch scenarios and the problem cannot be solved by just “not buying”. Also, don’t assume. I don’t even purchase EA games, I posted this because its the best example lately of this kind of practice and proving how awareness works better than simply not buying the game. You said it yourself; you don’t buy EA games, I don’t either, did they still ship a product with questionable ethics? Yes! They did! Proving that just because some of us who pay attention and don’t buy the stuff, doesn’t have a huge effect. If their image gets hurt and is made newsworthy, those who didn’t think about it before, will now…and it will hurt their sales.
I don’t buy EA games, and when I buy games, I only buy them used on eBay, why? Because of shit like this; they will try to rip people like you and I, off. If awareness is made, other companies thinking about doing it, may just decide not to. That is the point.
I agree with this as well, if they want pay for play like this, its fine, they can be greedy, but as it stands it made an unbalanced and unfair game. They dialed back the microtransactions, saying they will be back at a later date after some “tuning”. Yeah, after the holiday season is over, it will go back with marginal changes. I wouldn’t bet they would do anything right. If they make it too balanced, people will lose a lot of incentive to buy the stuff. I highly doubt they’d even consider the idea.
For the record, I have not bought the game, I’ve seen someone playing it and tried it, it is a beautiful game, campaign seems predictable as hell, but the elephant in the room completely ruins its potential.
If they do right by the consumer for once, this may be an EA game I would actually purchase (for the nostalgia feeling of playing SW games since I was a kid). As it stands, I am heartily glad they are being made an example out of. But I’m also still sore from them ruining some good game companies like Jane’s Combat Sims, Maxis, and Westwood… they were part of my childhood and EA took a huge dump on them. If they don’t work this out, DICE is going to be buried next.
I don’t understand why it “cannot be allowed to continue.”
I agree it’s ridiculous, but there’s a difference between a market failure the government needs to address, like a monopoly, and a case where some consumers have more money than brains. If you’re willing to let EA fleece you, so be it. There is no compelling interest here for the government to be involved in.
Like D_Odds, I’m a gamer and somehow I don’t lose money on this because, to use the economics term, I’m not a fool.
Well, necessary or not, it may come. Officials in Belgium determined that the random loot crates are gambling and will request that the EU look into banning them. The UK is starting to investigate. Here in the US, Representatives Chris Lee & Sean Quinlan (both D-HI) said that they feel the crates prey upon children. They seem to be of the opinion that, rather then seeking federal action, if they can nudge a few choice states to regulate then the industry will be forced to adjust rather than not sell their product in, say, California.
Although the focus will be “think of the children”, game designers use insidiouspsychologicaltricks to try and make people pay up and, although it’s well and dandy to say “Well, I’d never pay for that!” I’m not convinced that it’s that simple. And that’s for adults; I wouldn’t expect children or teens to rationally deal with sunk cost fallacies or triggers for dopamine rushes. At the very least, we should treat it as any other truth in labeling sort of issue: Be clear about what the exact odds for rewards are and what the projected hourly rate would be to earn those rewards otherwise. Just saying “Well, you can just earn them for free” shouldn’t be enough and I bet a lot of companies would change practice rather than say “Work for 65 hours to get a blessed diamond blade axe or spend $2.15 on a 0.125% chance”
Precisely. Exactly. Absolutely. These practices don’t stem from gamers who love lootboxes, or from game designers & artists who think loot boxes are just what the vision of their perfect game needs.
It comes from corporate greed and the pressure from the “industry” part of the gaming industry to make all of the money as fast as possible by exploiting their customers.
Like every horrible capitalist practice (and the industry has no shortage of those), it will continue as long as it’s a successful business model and people, customers and coders alike, stand for it. Much like they’ll keep making soulless Call of Duty clones and one Madden a year while paying their workers chump change (if they’re paid at all - looking at you, Crytek) AS LONG AS MILLIONS OF PEOPLE KEEP BUYING THAT CRAP OR LINING UP TO WORK FOR THEM.
So don’t. Be part of the solution.
The only message corporate suits have ever heard and will ever hear (nevermind understand) is “the quarterly projections are below expectations”. They don’t give a second-hand shit about their customers’ expectations or their gaming experience. You and me, we’re just a money piñata to them, and micro-transaction is one of the new and exciting bats they’ve come up with. And yes, it’s absolutely meant to target vulnerable, impulse-challenged, addiction-prone people.
Because tricks like this will make them more money. You seem to neglect that these strategies are based on psychological manipulation. The entire concept of this sort of thing is to try and bring in “whales” that will become completely addicted to your game and spend orders of magnitude more money than others.
If this strategy works, then other AAA games will follow suit, and thus games that are games and not Skinner boxes become rare. Why make a real game if you can get more money making games that deliberately try to addict your players?
Yes, ideally the market will stop this shit. But we thought that about Free to Play, too. It’s still going strong. Those whales keep them in business, and the entire gaming industry suffers from time being spend developing this shit rather than games that aren’t just addiction machines.
The free market didn’t stop gambling. It’s a rationally stupid thing to do, outside of bets by friends and lotteries and stuff. Because it’s always designed with a house edge, meaning you will wind up losing. Any pleasure you get from winning will be offset by feeling bad from losing, which happens in roughly equal amounts.
It’s stupid, but people do it anyways. And loot boxes are stupid, but people play these games anyways. Free to play is stupid, but enough people pay to play to make it work.
Gaming has a problem of using psychology to manipulate people, and there has to be a line drawn. For once we’re finally getting momentum to try and stop these predatory practices. Something finally seems like it might be too far, and maybe we can finally draw a line that they can’t cross. But, instead, people want to fall back on the free market that keeps letting this shit happen.
Eh, de gustibus non disputandum est. I play and pay for games I like. I do neither for games I don’t. Presumably other gamers are doing likewise.
As far as I can tell, we’re in a golden age of gaming. Because it’s ridiculously easy for developers to distribute games and word-of-mouth travels quickly, the barriers to entry for new games is lower than it’s ever been. I have no worries about large companies forcing business models I don’t like on me.
True, but do you feel positive or negative about Free to Play games? I’m quite certain most if not all people consider them to be the lowest of the low on gaming’s quality scale; everyone knows what they are and accepts them on that level. In this way, these “AAA” games with microtransactions are not elevating the model, rather they’re just dragging themselves down to that same level of poor quality dreck.
Reviews are middling. It’s a spectacle, but as a shooter, it’s only ok. It’s not any new or better than previous shooters that you probably already own.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to talk about the game separately from the loot box situation, because EA has routed all progress through those slot machines. The numbers are such that people who have been lucky or who have paid big bucks are significantly stronger newcomers. The numbers are also such as to make paying for loot boxes the only hope anyone has of catching up.
Stripping the paid loot boxes from the game means that currently, there’s no shortcut for catching up. If you haven’t already bought the game and played all through Thanksgiving, you’re probably already too far behind the curve to be competitive in multiplayer.
When the paid loot boxes are turned back on (they will be) you will need to pay big bucks if you want to be competitive.
This is the real problem with the game, aside from how it introduces your kids to the joys of gambling addiction. The game was built so that progress is purely rng and then the rng was rigged so that buying upgrades would be more attractive than grinding for them.
Here’s Ars Tech’s review, which explains in more detail. Their conclusion: “Avoid”.
PS - there is a singleplayer mode. It’s about five hours long and generally well-received. If you want the game for sp, wait and you can fish it out of a bargain bin in six months.
I don’t think the business model alone is grounds for declaring a game is “the lowest of the low”. Candy Crush is a shit game in part because it aggressively tries to get at your wallet in obnoxious ways and artificially inflates difficulty so that you’ll buy useless consumables, yes ; but also because it’s, well, a shit game.
On the other hand Path of Exile, a free to play Diablo clone with micro-transactions (that only impart cosmetic stuff) is a great, deep and engaging game in ways that Diablo III, a game made by a AAA studio with a 60 bucks pricetag, sits alone at night in the dark and cries itself to sleep wondering why it can’t be.
Magic:Duels is free to play and it’s pretty much all I need for a MTG game to be - yeah, it doesn’t have ALL OF THE CARDS or draft events etc… like “true” MTGOnline does… On the other hand, it’s free and while you can spend money on it, 100% of the content can be gotten just by playing so that seems smarter to me :).
There’s nothing *intrinsically wrong *with the free-to-play, microtransaction model. And I don’t even mind if a good game nickel and dimes me once in a while - I mean, I played MMORPGs for years and they worked on the exact same principle : you repeatedly pay a little for the privilege of playing. By that same token, having to shell out a couple of bucks to permanently unlock this or that bit of content because I liked the free content up to there and want more seems fine to me. Hell, in a way it’s more honest than asking me to pay 50 bucks for a game I haven’t played at all and don’t know whether or not I’ll actually like or is any good past the typical front-loaded, reviewer-intended opening extravaganza.
Much like other questionable models like Early Access or Kickstarter, the wrongness comes from the philosophy driving the use of the model : is the game made because a bunch of designers had some AWESOME ideas that just needed to get out there and that model works for them where others wouldn’t or not as well ; or is the game made solely around and because that model exists and works and can make a lot of money from dipshits and your mom’s virtual carrot patch if you know how to work it ? (Does Farmville still even exists ? I’m old. But now THAT was an evil game by an evil company)
I am another gamer who has a hard time sympathizing with the OP. I don’t like microtransactions so I don’t play games that have microtransactions. I have not found that I am lacking for interesting and fun games to play.
