It’s been a while now since we’ve written anything about the video games industry – but this one’s too good of a story to pass up. EA has received a Guinness World Record for the most downvoted comment in Reddit history. You may have already seen this story make the rounds on the internet in the past two days, but we’re going to write about it anyways – because more publicity towards this is good.
So, you know how EA likes their loot boxes? They’ll try to implement it in any game that they publish – including Star Wars Battlefront II (the new one). We say the new one because the original had amassed a serious cult following – a generation of gamers who adored that game; it was a masterpiece.
When EA launched the reboot back in 2017, they introduced it, yes – you guessed it, loot boxes. What was locked behind these loot boxes were characters – cool ones like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. The issue here is that, not only are you paying full price for the game already, you had to pay extra to play as the characters that should’ve been available on the get go. Another way to get these characters would be to grind endlessly (about 40 hours) to get them.
Image credit: MXVideos
So you can already see the mechanics were designed to tempt players at spending money if the grind took too long for them. Gamers were unhappy, and in true gamer fashion, we took to the internet, and Reddit to blast the American company for their attempt at broad daylight robbery.
EA then responded in typical EA fashion – which you can read below:
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.
Image credit: Reddit
Cringe right? Yeap, you and 683,000 Redditors cringed too – the comment had amassed that many amount of likes, scoring EA the dishonourable award. Never try to mask greed as a game mechanic designed to challenge players – we’re not that dumb, and we don’t have that much time…or money. Perhaps this will serve as a warning to EA and other developers to listen to their core audience; you know, because they’re the ones paying for the game.