EA received a huge amount of backlash for the initial implementation of loot boxes in Star Wars Battlefront II last year. That system was ultimately removed from the game, but only after the damage to the game and to EA's reputation had already come to pass.
This year at E3 2018, EA revealed that neither DICE's Battlefield V (due on October 19th) nor Bioware's Anthem would feature loot boxes or indeed, any form of non-cosmetic microtransactions, confirming what Chief Design Officer Patrick Söderlund had suggested in April.
In a recent interview with GamesIndustry, Söderlund on the new policy that's being employed at Electronic Arts.
For us, we have come together after the learnings with what happened last year. We've put together a framework on how we believe a large service should function, and it's something we apply across the whole company, across all products.
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. There should be a fair game economy in the game so you can't pay to win. We don't want you to be able to pay your way to be better than others. That's important to us. But we also look at trends in the market and see people are fine with paying for other things, such as how they appear in the game. That seems to be completely fine.
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.
Do you think EA is on the right path now? Tell us in the comments.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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