I’ve been hearing a theory that all this recent EA controversy is part of some big master plan. That they anticipated everyone’s reaction to their loot box shenanigans, and have purposefully changed things last minute to expertly quell the outrage.
I don’t buy it.
You’re not going to convince me that EA fully predicted this situation or wants to be in the middle of it. These Battlefront 2 and Need for Speed Payback 75 and 64 Meta/Opencritic scores are not something they will like to see in an industry that still gives out bonuses for 85s+.
Similarly, the outrage is not quelled. All you have to do is look across social media or reddit to see that. The top story leading /r/gaming right now is a calculation that unlocking and maxing every Star Card in Battlefront 2 requires either 4,528 hours of gameplay or $2,100 worth of loot box purchases, on average. Later today, there’s going to be an AMA with DICE developers that feels like someone voluntarily walking in front of a firing squad.
The question is whether anything is actually going to change as a result of this, and in many ways, this feels like an important moment for the industry.
I’d argue that Battlefront 2 represents a fork in the road when it comes to how loot boxes will be used in games going forward. On the one side, you have loot boxes how they’ve always been: annoying, but able to be largely ignored due to their separation from the main game. Some games like Shadow of War have blurred that line, but even that game doesn’t compare to the other path, what EA is doing with games like Battlefront 2 and Need for Speed Payback.
These are games that are being designed from the ground up to integrate loot boxes in the core of their upgrade and progression systems. There is no avoiding loot boxes because upgrading your soldier, starfighter, race car, etc. is only possible through a randomized loot box system. You do not have to buy loot boxes since you can earn them in-game, but you literally cannot avoid them either because they are integrated into the core of the experience. EA trying to run around adjusting prices and drop rates here and there is like adding and subtracting toppings on already burned pizza.
Ultimately, this is on consumers. If we want to avoid a future where progression is explicitly tied to randomized loot boxes, Battlefront 2 has to fail (I have a hunch Need for Speed Payback already will).
And that sucks! A ton of people worked extremely hard on this game, and the vast majority of them have nothing to do with loot boxes or their implementation. But if A) Battlefront 2 is a huge sales hit even after all these protests and B) people still buy these loot boxes in droves, that sends EA the message to do more of the same. Past that, if the game does well enough, it might indicate that other publishers should follow EA into this dystopian monetization future.
I’m not actively calling for a boycott as everyone can make up their own minds, I’m just stating facts. The only thing that will matter in the end is how much revenue this brings in. It will bring in some, that much is clear, but if EA looks to their right and sees Activision selling triple the amount of loot boxes in their game, keeping them mostly cosmetic and separate from the core of the title, that’s important.
But EA has instead been looking at something like FIFA Ultimate Team, a billion-dollar revenue driver and their goal has been to put something that potentially profitable in every game.
Fans and critics always throw out warnings about how too much greed can backfire. But for that to matter it…actually has to backfire. Review scores and downvoted comment threads is not enough. Harassing individual devs is the worst response and only shifts the story from EA to childish fans. The game simply has to underperform for any of this to matter.
Then again, it’s hard to tell what the hell is going to happen in this industry these days. You might remember two years ago when the big Battlefront controversy was its expensive, content-rich season pass, and what we’re seeing now with free DLC and a loot box-based model was supposed to fix those problems. And look out that turned out. At this rate, maybe I’m not too keen to see what EA’s new “fix” will be.
It’s a weird position to be in. I don’t like actively rooting for a game to fail because of all the work that went into it and how that could affect people’s livelihoods. But in contrast, if Battlefront 2 uses this model to great success, that is bad news for the entire industry as we will only see more and more games like this in the future.
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