EA Promises They Learned from Star Wars Battlefront 2 Controversy

EA has made many, many mistakes – chief among them, of course, would be the whole Star Wars Battlefront 2 thing, where they got just a bit too greedy for your money and decided to completely ruin a highly-anticipated game by throwing in some of the worst loot boxes we’ve ever seen in the industry. And now that Star Wars Battlefront 2 has officially “removed” those loot boxes (too little too late, of course), EA’s chief design officer Patrick Söderlund told The Verge that the controversy has had a profound effect on the company moving forward.

“We can shy away from it and pretend like it didn’t happen, or we can act responsibly and realize that we made some mistakes, and try to rectify those mistakes and learn from them.”

He continued, explaining why exactly they chose to do what they did (if you can believe them this time, they’ve offered way too many excuses at this point)….

“We had the intent that was designed for us to have more people play it over a longer period of time. And like a lot of other games on the market, to be able to afford to do that we had an idea of getting returns from that. But at the same time, we got it wrong.”

…and talked about how they would use what they learned here moving forward.

“We have taken significant steps as a company to review and understand the mechanics around monetization, loot boxes, and other things in our games before they go to market,” he says. “For games that come next, for Battlefield or for Anthem, [players have] made it very clear that we can’t afford to make similar mistakes. And we won’t... We have to take action and show people that we’re serious about building the best possible products, that we’re serious about treating the players fair, and we’re here to make the best possible entertainment that we can. And in the cases where we don’t get it right, we just have to listen and learn from it and be better.”

Okay, sure. Fool me once, EA, shame on you. But if you think you’re gonna fool me twice, ha, not likely. I’ll believe you’ve learned when Anthem is in the public’s hands, and not a moment sooner.

And I know I’m not the only one.