EA Removes Microtransactions from Star Wars Battlefront 2

If you’ve been keeping up with the whole debacle around EA’s latest trash fire, Star Wars Battlefront 2, you’d know that people were pissed at it over the whole “pay money for tangible gameplay benefits” thing. EA has tried issuing statements, adjusting hero prices, removing high-level cards from the lottery to appease fans, and even hosting AMA’s, but despite those efforts, people have remained quite miffed. Understandably so.

Thing is, gamers being mad? That’s not really news. But the fact that they’ve remained this mad for this long has been quite surprising. Typically people tend to forget and not forgive these kinds of things, but the downpour of hate has been so consistent and fevered that even EA can’t ignore it for much longer.

So it’s with a bit of surprise that I report that EA has officially removed microtransactions from Star Wars Battlefront 2. For the time being, it’s impossible to pay money to get better stats and abilities than your opponents.

It won’t stay that way, but for now, the game has leveled the playing field. In a blog post:

…as we approach the worldwide launch, it's clear that many of you feel there are still challenges in the design. We’ve heard the concerns about potentially giving players unfair advantages. And we’ve heard that this is overshadowing an otherwise great game. This was never our intention. Sorry we didn’t get this right.

We hear you loud and clear, so we’re turning off all in-game purchases. We will now spend more time listening, adjusting, balancing and tuning. This means that the option to purchase crystals in the game is now offline, and all progression will be earned through gameplay. The ability to purchase crystals in-game will become available at a later date, only after we’ve made changes to the game. We’ll share more details as we work through this.

For some, it’s all too little too late. And that’s fine: it’s too soon to be optimistic anyway as they admit the ability to buy crystals will return at a later date. But if nothing else, it shows how serious EA is about the critique they’re getting. I kind of just expected them to muscle through it, but something’s different this time around. Consider me… cautiously optimistic. And hopeful that maybe this whole mess is making some games currently in-development think twice about adding their own loot boxes.

But we’ll have to see. This adventure isn’t over yet.