Electronic Arts had a rough year in 2017 as the mega publisher was met with rising ire from both the gamers in the community, and with other industry professionals. At one point, their Star Wars Battlefront II multiplayer experience even uncovered direct manipulation to “coerce players into feeling they need to purchase crates,” making the pay-to-win mentality harder to ignore. Since then, they seemed to have learned their lesson after backlash after backlash, and also with many of their investors threatening to pull out of their scope. With Anthem on the horizon, it’s more important than ever before that they re establish that trust lost.
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“You have to look at it from the perspective of what’s fair. Fair is the number one thing. When you buy a product from us, you should get full value for the money you spend.” Chief Design Officer Patrick Soderlund in a recent interview with GamesIndustry. “I think it’s obvious we didn’t get Battlefront II right. So we have two options. We can either hide in the corner and pretend like we got it right and there’s nothing here to see, or we can admit the fact that we didn’t get it right, and we can course correct and show the world that we care. That’s the path we’ve chosen.”
Though microtransactions isn’t a new concept in the gaming world, the pay-to-win model is definitely something uglier that bred from that. Online gamers already struggle against cheaters and hackers, to throw the ability to buy your way to skill makes the playing field even more tumultuous and unenjoyable. Pairing that with the price of the base games themselves, and it’s just a money farm.
Though businesses need to make money and in no way should gamers fault them for that, there are much more balanced ways to host microtransactions in-game. Overwatch is a fine example – purely cosmetic and all earnable via organic gameplay. Hopefully EA really did take the feedback to heart and we don’t have another scandal when Anthem finally drops on February 22nd of next year, pending no further delays.
