A victory for honesty

When Star Wars Battlefront II closed it's beta, gamers were furious, and with good reason.

There's been a lot of talk recently about the prevalence of loot-boxes in AAA games. For those not in the know, a AAA stands for the biggest, richest and most powerful game publishers on the market. I've been unable to find a proper list of them all, but companies like Electronic Arts (EA), Ubisoft, Blizzard-Activision and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment are good examples.

Loot-boxes on the other hand are in-game crates of (usually) loot and other kinds of gear that are handed out by the game as rewards. The contents are randomly generated, lottery-style.

So what's the hubbub, you ask?

Some games like Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch only give out cosmetic items in their loot-boxes, meaning the contents can only modify your characters appearance, not their performance. Recently, however, many AAA publishers have taken a page from the mobile game market in order to pump up their revenue, by selling loot-boxes with game enhancing content. And when I say selling, I mean for real money. Not in-game currency like fantasy gold, but real Dollars and Euros, leading to entirely correct accusation is pay-to-win mechanics. This scummy habit is bad enough in mobile games that are free to play, but when the game costs $60-90, it's inexcusable.

In the case of Star Wars Battlefront II, it got even worse. Gamers were horrified to discover that not only was the entire progression system loot-box based, but as such, all progress was random. To make matters worse, you could buy more crates with real money, if you found your progress too slow. Pure pay-to-win, in other words. The players who were willing to shell out the most money at launch would get an unbeatable edge over the competition.

Well, people weren't about to take that sitting down. The internet exploded in outrage, and quickly spilled over, to the point where main-stream media reported on it. EA and the game studio, DICE, started back-pedaling, but it was too little, too late. EA actually saw their stock fall in value, which is practically unheard of. Meetings were held behind closed doors and a statement was quickly pushed out the door stating that the so called micro-transactions were removed from the game. A clear victory for honest players right? Yes and no. The same statement also said that the micro-transactions would be reinstated at a later date, when they could be “balanced”. In other words when EA thinks they can sneak it in and no one cares anymore.

This whole debacle came about shortly after the scandal where Warner Bros. had put actual game enhancements in Shadow of War. It's up to all of us to support game developers and studios that play fair. Don't give your money to studios and publishers who lie, steal and cheat.

These loot-boxes, with their real money costs, and “spin-to-win” mechanics have been accused of being a covert form of gambling. The ESRB have stated that they're not, but both Belgium and Holland are looking into this. Especially since gambling is regulated all over the world, and these loot-boxes aren't, but they are sold to minors. If the verdict comes down as guilty, they may even be banned, and that ban could spread throughout the EU. Let's hope so.

To end on a more positive note, Blizzard has announced that they will be releasing vanilla servers for World of Warcraft at some point in the future, something players have been asking for for a long time.

That's it for me. Until next time, have a great week, and avoid micro-transactions.