EA now has the most downvoted comment in Reddit history after trying to defend Star Wars Battlefront 2‘s microtransactions, with a post from one of the company’s official accounts garnering over 140,000 downvotes and counting.
In a post on the Star Wars Battlefront 2 subreddit titled ‘Seriously? I paid $80 to have [Darth] Vader locked?’ the EACommunityTeam responded to criticisms of the game’s heroes, with playable characters such as Darth Vader locked from the outset and requiring a ton of credits in order to unlock them. Some players have estimated that it will take around 40 hours to unlock a single hero, though this time can be significantly reduced by purchasing loot boxes, which contain more credits than players will obtain from playing the game.
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With Battlefront 2 being a major talking point on Reddit over the past few days as a result of these issues, EA decided to step in and offer an excuse for some of the game’s heroes being locked behind so many credits:
“The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.
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 comment has attracted heaps of criticism from other Reddit users, with it being downvoted (Reddit’s way of disagreeing with a comment or post) over 140,000 times and this number still steadily increasing. Other Reddit users have also posted their own responses to EA’s comment, with one reply reading: “This is a joke right? When you have the same currency tied to unlocking crates as you do to unlocking heroes. You can swipe your credit card for crates and just save up every single credit to unlock heroes. There is no freaking pride or sense of accomplishment in this.”
Though Star Wars Battlefront 2 has yet to be officially released, the game has been available via EA Access, offering players a trial of the full game and therefore allowing them to see its microtransactions in action. It remains to be seen whether or not EA will change its approach to in-game purchases and hero unlocks as a result of this fan feedback, but either way the backlash to its loot boxes is certain to have caused a headache for the publisher behind the scenes.
