We’re four days away from the first Star Wars video game story since Star Wars Kinect, but few people are talking about what Star Wars Battlefront 2‘s campaign might look like. Instead, the internet discourse has been all about microtransactions, and players feel so ripped off that they have granted publisher EA the award for most downvoted Reddit comment of all time.
At -341,000 points (and growing) in less than 24 hours, this post from Reddit user EACommunityTeam defending Battlefront 2‘s locking of characters such as Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker is by far the most unpopular comment in Reddit’s history. The previous leader, as compiled on this wiki page, was just -24,333. (Points are determined by starting at 0, adding the number of upvotes including the original poster’s, and subtracting the number of downvotes.)
“The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes,” reads the post, a response to one Redditor complaining that they had spent $80 on Star Wars Battlefront 2 only to find Vader locked behind a paywall that would take either real money or dozens of hours of gameplay to access.
EACommunityTeam continued:
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.
The post is getting thousands of downvotes every few minutes, so it’s possible that bots are involved here, but this is an impressive milestone nonetheless, up there with EA’s crown of Worst Company In America in 2012 and 2013. And it’s hard not to feel bad for all the developers who crunched their arses off to ship this game and had nothing to do with loot crates.
Comments
49 responses to “EA Defence Of Star Wars Battlefront 2 Becomes Most Downvoted Reddit Comment Ever”
Talk’s cheap. Last couple ‘In the Business’ articles have pointed out that microtransactions made up 50% of Ubisoft’s digital revenue at the last earnings call. NPD puts it as 25% of total gaming revenue.
If you have a lever you can pull that makes half a million internet people say you’re crap but puts a billion fucking dollars in your bank account, you’re going to pull that fucking lever til your arm drops off.
There’s only one way to get companies to shift focus away from microtransactions. Just one. And it’s not the downvote button.
Is it changing your profile pic on FB?
Thoughts and prayers?
Sacrificial tim-tams?
(That said, while microtransactions and lockboxes aren’t going away until we stop buying them, complaining about them might make them cheaper. https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/starwars/battlefront/battlefront-2/news/swbfii-changes-launch)
Edit: Sort of cheaper. Is something cheaper if the price gets reduced but what you earn also gets reduced?
https://www.vg247.com/2017/11/14/star-wars-battlefront-2-has-reduced-the-credits-awarded-for-finishing-the-campaign/
This company is a joke and so is this game and it’s micro transactions . To say everyone would be the same greedy assholes as Ea just because the opportunity presents itself is pathetic . Go play some real games and stop thinking like a good little clone .
“The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes,”
No, the intent is to make the grind so long people pay to bypass it.
If they wanted to give people a sense of pride and accomplishment they’d let everyone use all the characters and have some rare skins unlocked for playing for ages and some rare skins unlocked for completing extremely hard tasks. They certainly wouldn’t equate buying them via loot crates with “pride and accomplishment”.
Seeing the difference in regards to weapon skins between BF4 and BF1 is this exact point. Acheivements in BF4 got you camo and unlocks, BF1 introduces lootboxes that you can buy with skins on a timed rotation, not hard to see why EA decided going forward that they’d be sticking with it, this isn’t new for them, it worked for BF1 and it’ll do fine here.
Realistically, this isn’t going to affect the people in EA that are looking after the bottom line. If their reputation hasn’t bothered them until now, I doubt that it’s suddenly going to start being an issue for them. They might come out with another canned response and tweak costs a little bit, but they’re not going to revamp their business model over it. Sadly, they’re aware that it’s still going to rake in money, and that this is barely a blip on the revenue radar.
The best outcome would be some internal pressure from more of the creative boots on the ground; their artists, developers and people like that. They’re way more likely to have an emotional attachment to their work and an empathetic view of their audience, so EA’s reputation probably bothers them on some level. Hopefully, an incident like this spurs them to kick up at least a little bit of fuss.
It might bother Disney who licenced everything and included it to the films story (canon)
Pfft ya right .. apart from that one dev they are all sitting happily in their money like pigs in shit . What a joke EA has become. Why do people even play their games anymore when PCs and better games exist ? Drop this joke of a company from all of your gaming radars , and go play / do something worth while .
I keep hoping that the latest shit show with regards to this stuff will be the one that makes these companies wake up.
I’m going to be hoping for a long time.
It’s not the companies that need to wake up, it’s the consumers. If people keep buying this shit then the companies will keep selling it.
Agreed. But so long as there are Star Wars fanboys and ignorant parents, that ain’t gonna happen.
“But we aren’t the ones buying it! We boycott everything!”
Then we’re not the ones they’re making games for.
Audiences change. It sucks, but they’re going to follow whoever’s spending.
Just like how Blizzard’s last five years worth of games releases are all multi-player match-based bullshit, steering them away from the single-player campaigns that made me fall in love with all their franchises in the first place. Blizzard doesn’t make games for me any more, and that hurts, because they made many of my favourites. Nothing I can do about it, though, because their new audience is huge and spends more.
Just like Konami.. they dont make games for me anymore
Wait… they dont make games for anyone anymore
Do they even make games anymore?
They skipped straight to the natural endgame of lootboxes and just make slot machines now.
The others will catch up eventually!
I dunno, Metal Gear: Survive looks right up my alley. I’m currently in the process of a second playthrough of MGS V. God damn I love that game.
PES is still awesome.
I often feel like i’m being aged out of game franchises i love, Fallout 4 was not a game made for me, I have every Fallout game ever made but that one really hurt, It’s the wake up call to remind you that you as a fan aren’t important.
They reduced the prices by 75% at least…
It’s a start?
But they also reduced the amount of credits you earn lol. It still takes about the same amount of time.
There should be an exponential loot system. You gain lots of stuff in like say 20 hours (The initial play through period, the sweet tender juicy parts to get you hooked), and the same loot you got in 20 hours, takes 40 in the 2nd teir (The “I think im pretty good now, I’ll turn the difficulty up to challenge myself”), and so on until the final grind and end game dilemma every game company faces.
EA somewhat caved this morning and have lowered the price of the heroes by 75% they are now 15,000 credits as opposed to 60,000 so the negative response seems to have worked.
Personally this is just them twisting their end which isn’t a better situation for us, it’s still easier and better to pay and unlock heroes, 1 which shouldn’t be locked in the first place, 2 shouldn’t use the same currency for regular troop upgrades forcing you to split and 3, shouldn’t have anything to do with fucking money in the first place.
I agree 100%, it is just putting a band aid over the major issue at play. Sadly we can’t get everyone to buy into this whole stop paying to get better epidemic . Until that happens things won’t get better.
No idea why you were downvoted for that reasonable comment, have an upvote.
I was? Haha I don’t pay attention to that stuff on here, if someone doesn’t agree and wants to downvote all good. We all have differing opinions.
You were merely stating a fact so literally no reason for the downvote, you didn’t present an argument supporting EA. People can be silly.
Not enough.
This sort of stuff annoys me, because I personally love DICE shooters and enjoy how those shooters both look and play.
I love Battlefield, but found Battlefront pretty dull once the thrill of all the Star Wars sights and sounds wore off. Which makes it easier to skip this one, at least.
People will complain about this with volatility while simultaneously trying to insert their wallet into the screen.
Might have to pop over to reddit and give them another downvote.
Ill upvote you here because you downvoted there.
EA just 1-upped themselves again:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7cotkx/xpost_rstarwarsbattlefront_ea_responds_to/
Anyone remember when EA was voted the worst company in the world two years’ running? Didn’t make much of a dent, did it?
Internet rage means exactly zero. @transientmind is spot on.
Just letting you know, it doesn’t mean “zero”. It affects everyone who has been putting their blood sweat and tears into making a beautiful fun game. It affects the poor community relations person who typed that message – he/she’s probably wondering what they did so wrong. I hope they’re ok — whoever they are.
I’m not a part of this team, but have been parts of similar teams on different games in the past. It really sucks to see so much hate directed at something you worked so hard on.
Out of curiosity, how does a team feel towards the higher-ups when that feedback comes back? Like, does anyone ever get angry at the corporate fucks who twisted a labour of love into something evil and exploitative? Or do they grumble at the customers for daring to be upset at the naked manipulation and greed?
I can’t speak for jello, but from my experience it’s like 80/20 against the decision makers. There’s just nothing you can do about it, almost everyone in a game company is not only replaceable but disposable.
When I was a student I attended a lecture from the CEO of Halfbrick (if I remember correctly) who used a space ship as an analogy for game developers vs publishers. It went something like …
Inside the space ship is nice and warm and friendly – that’s where the game is developed. Outside the space ship is cold, unfriendly and horrible – that’s where the publishers live. Generally it works out OK but every once in a while someone opens the airlock and all hell breaks loose.
We don’t really get angry at the higher ups. We are all a part of a team working on different aspects of the projects. Artists and programmers work on making the game pretty and fun. There are a bunch of other roles that are responsible for making the game actually make money.
This seems like an obvious thing, but a good game doesn’t necessarily make a lot of money.
The teams that make a game like battlefront are huge, and someone needs to pay those people. The price of a game disc alone doesn’t always cover the development costs.
Things like micro transactions are new and evolving and sometimes people get it right, sometimes they get it wrong.
But the bottom line is that it’s “people” making these decisions, not faceless corporations.
You’re right, of course.
My wording was careless: I meant to say that it didn’t affect EA’s bottom line or business practices. Internet rage is a horrible and damaging thing to individuals.
I apologise.
I read it as ‘achieves nothing positive or productive’. Figured it was implied or assumed.
No worries 🙂 I understood what you meant, but it seemed like a good conversation point to add my 2c. I wasn’t responding to “you” personally.
Reminder that 99% of people who work at EA had nothing to do with the decision-making involved in implementing this feature, and the same goes for any other feature someone doesn’t like in any game. It’s fine to be frustrated, to refuse to buy from the company and to express both of those in a calm, rational way. But please don’t be abusive towards their staff, or representatives on social media. Please don’t send death threats, please don’t write Reddit posts hoping they all die. If we as gamers can’t express ourselves without going completely off the deep end, we’ll never be taken seriously beyond “gamers had a tantrum, I guess just give the babies what they want”. That’s a pyrrhic victory at best.
We’re better than that, and the message will be stronger if we act like normal people in the process.
I wonder what EA is going to tell Disney about how they treated their franchise.
Given the stink they also got for shutting down the single player story title that was in development (cause it didn’t conform to their loot box “games as service” model).
Hopefully this will start changing the industry on loot boxes and stuff, or at least Disney will have to sit down and ask them “What are you doing with our IP?” Cause considering how quick they fire directors for not conforming to their vision and issuing lots of reshoots… switching developers may not be far off for them.
Will people stop presuming that games owe us anything? It is what it is, enjoy what we can and vote with your wallet if you feel strongly enough.
I think that the anger directed to Battlefront 2 is a result of poor mistakes that were made in Battlefront 1. People who just bought the standard game found a mere 5 maps. and the servers trying to force purchase of DLC after only 6 months.
EA are trying to put out more information to calm people but it is just making the situation worse. Who wants to pay $100 for a game just to have their arse kicked by someone who forked out a whole lot more? You can level up just by playing but it takes hundreds of hours. Why doesn’t EA come out and just let us know how much it will cost to level up everything in the game?
I paid full price for Mario, but they made me start at level 1! The savages!