EA Releases Next Free DLC For Battlefront

Despite the fact that no game was better prepared to earn all the money, EA couldn’t help but blow it with Star Wars: Battlefront. The demo knocked people’s socks off, and they were chomping at the bit for more--only for the final game to be released and for the full game to be only a bit bigger than the free demo. At least, that’s how it felt. Further exaggerating the problem was the 50-dollar season pass, which promised a whole host of new maps and game modes, at the cost of nearly doubling the price of the game.

EA has since released some free DLC for the game, the Battle of Jakku, and promised more in addition to the paid DLC released in the season pass. Enough to bring goodwill back to the company? God no. But it’s a step, and EA is taking the next one with the recent announcement of the next free DLC pack, which will be released today.

• Blast, Droid Run, Drop Zone, Hero Hunt and Heroes vs Villains support for the Tatooine Survival map (now called the "Raider Camp").
• New Hoth outfits for Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.
• Private matches.
• New Daily Challenges and immunity events aimed at "giving players the chance to earn credits and unlocks" faster than normal.
• Balance "tweaks" to "both weapons and multiplayer modes.

It’s a bit disingenuous to call balancing ‘free dlc’, but EA’s clearly grasping at straws here. In addition to all that, EA promised more free updates, and gave us a little bit of more information surrounding the paid DLC that will be released later in 2016. Specifically: the DLC will allow you to battle in Jabba the Hutt's palace (March 2016), Bespin and Cloud City (Summer 2016) and the Death Star itself (Fall 2016).

If all this extra content makes the game finally live up to its own hype, that would be great. It’s a shame that they couldn’t have released at least some of this with the full game to give it a bit more meat… but you know, thinking on it, it’s not impossible that the reason EA took this route was because they were trying to emulate the successful formula Splatoon has used. Less in the core game, but more unlocked as time goes on.

The difference, I guess, is that Splatoon didn’t come with a season pass, and people actually trust Nintendo.