We need to talk about EA

[RepentantSky]

EA has temporarily suspended all microtransactions in Battlefront II. They will be looking to re-balance everything to address the issues that have been brought up all week. Let's just hope they wise up and remove star cards for loot boxes, and keep it purely cosmetic, because anything less than that, is still going to garner outrage, that is clearly justifiable: https://www.destructoid.com/ea-has-tempo...3126.phtml

[The Antagonist]

EA has temporarily suspended all microtransactions in Battlefront II. They will be looking to re-balance everything to address the issues that have been brought up all week. Let's just hope they wise up and remove star cards for loot boxes, and keep it purely cosmetic, because anything less than that, is still going to garner outrage, that is clearly justifiable: https://www.destructoid.com/ea-has-tempo...3126.phtml

It's a big win over a big company like EA. Now we just have to wait to see what they do, they can't be trusted yet.

As for the only cosmetic part, keep in mind Star Wars is Disney's. Everything you see in the game is disproved or approved by them and they want it to be as faithful to the franchise as possible.

So for EA and DICE to want to make, for example, a samurai stormtrooper, it needs approval from Disney and they will most likely say no.

[SERIOUSLY THOUGH*]

EA has temporarily suspended all microtransactions in Battlefront II. They will be looking to re-balance everything to address the issues that have been brought up all week. Let's just hope they wise up and remove star cards for loot boxes, and keep it purely cosmetic, because anything less than that, is still going to garner outrage, that is clearly justifiable: https://www.destructoid.com/ea-has-tempo...3126.phtml

Brilliant move from EA.
Say they're suspending it for now. People no longer cancel their pre-orders, sales come flooding in.
After the initial refund period expires "LOL K So actually we found nothing was wrong with the micro-transactions, so we brought them back with a 5% discount."

This is a classic marketing ploy and people are falling right into it. EA will have your money, and when they do, you better lube up be prepared.

[CLXcool]

Taking a wild guess here. Disney got wind on what EA was doing(thanks to the very hard amount of negative responses from the gaming community) and gave them the 'big guns' to shut it down. Star wars is owned by Disney, and i'm also going to guess that EA went ahead and did this without even telling Disney in the first place. If EA tries to continue it(which I wont be surprised if it happens) I can only imagine that Disney will bring the issue to the courtroom.

[RepentantSky]

Taking a wild guess here. Disney got wind on what EA was doing(thanks to the very hard amount of negative responses from the gaming community) and gave them the 'big guns' to shut it down. Star wars is owned by Disney, and i'm also going to guess that EA went ahead and did this without even telling Disney in the first place. If EA tries to continue it(which I wont be surprised if it happens) I can only imagine that Disney will bring the issue to the courtroom.

It's actually funny you should bring something like that up, because realistically, EA probably did this to stop or harm investigations from the Belgian Gaming Commission and Dutch Authorities who had announced investigations in the morning, just hours before the suspension of microtransactions was announced. I wouldn't be surprised to find out later that this was done solely to try and save microtransactions from being labeled as gambling, at least for the time being. It's an overall short-sighted move, and if people do buy the game, or when EA does bring them back, the investigation continues, but it's a nice legal way to delay, what is likely going to be inevitable.

[RepentantSky]

EA is now talking about allowing for an "accelerated experience" through microtransactions which means, as many feared, myself included, that they are not planning on removing microtransactions that are tied to progression: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/ea-star-...experience

[RepentantSky]

Apparently Disney told EA to change things, it wasn't a choice they made on their own: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mus7u9K0PjY&t=0s

[CLXcool]

Apparently Disney told EA to change things, it wasn't a choice they made on their own: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mus7u9K0PjY&t=0s

I had a feeling Disney wouldn't approve of this idea.

[RepentantSky]

The UK has done well to hit the sales numbers of Battlefront II in the best way possible, by not buying the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=106DdOEngzc

Now granted these are only physical copies, which is a market constantly dropping in sales, but no drop of physical games anywhere comes close to these numbers. The UK has done exactly what was needed, and EA's confident predictions of not really losing money due to all this controversy, seems to have been nothing more than a bluff by them or an attempt to brush everything off, and that is glorious.

[RepentantSky]

A French Senator has started going after EA now: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-w...0-6455112/

[CLXcool]

Now the creator of Plants vs zombies has been fired by EA.
https://www.pcgamesn.com/plants-vs-zombi...n-fired-ea

[Psychospacecow]

Plants VS Zombies 2 came out in 2013. He was fired years ago. More so, that article seems to be trying to debunk that claim by citing individuals from the Plants vs Zombies 2 team, like its Lead Producer.

[CLXcool]

Plants VS Zombies 2 came out in 2013. He was fired years ago. More so, that article seems to be trying to debunk that claim by citing individuals from the Plants vs Zombies 2 team, like its Lead Producer.

If that's the case, how the heck did this go unnoted from the public?

[RepentantSky]

I was actually going to post about this before this debate started but got caught up in the new issues brought up by the FCC and net neutrality. This video though will do a much better job explaining things than that articles does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HNSoy8BwDU&t=8s

The long and short of it is that it seems currently like Fan was fired because he didn't support EA's idea of pay-to-win. However, we don't know the full story, but we will know more about it tomorrow. There's no point in getting to up in arms about it yet, we may not have enough information right now to really say clearly what happened.

[RepentantSky]

Belgium has already concluded their investigation into microtransactions, and have taken our side on the issue: https://www.destructoid.com/the-belgium-...3952.phtml

Now if France, the UK and the Dutch all agree as well, we will have a real strong standing point against EA, Activision and the like to build a case against them, and possibly even force the US and Japan to consider taking a stand against them, since they've said almost nothing about it. I can't believe I'm saying this but, we're winning. If we do win this fight though, the battle is still not over because we'll need to be on our guard in case developers try to come up with new ways to nickel and dime everyone to death, but this is a step in the right direction.

Another thing worth talking about with Fan's story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igYnTTsVDfY