Law State of Hawaii is investigating EA for "Predatory Business Practices" - I bet EA is really loving Star Wars Battlefront II right now

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It's different in that the boxes are not purely cosmetic and contain items to use in the actual game. They included a pay to win system where you can buy in game money to buy it or grind it out by playing. However, they put time restrictions on earning credits, effectively combining pay 2 win with an energy timer.
 
Yeah but I am wondering why it took so long for OR what EA did different to get this type of attention?

Or did this get more prominence due to it happening on consoles? I don't frequent MP games so I am not sure what other games have lootbox systems.
Having it in Star Wars attracted the normies, and got the attention of the parents of the kids who were begging mom for a credit card to get more loot boxes.
 
Yeah Valve started this.
Sort of. Really the asian companies started it first in their MMOs and it spread to the west along with their shitty F2P mmo's but that seemed like the end of it at the time.
Then Valve introduced the idea into tf2 (which was free by that time) and CSGO (Which you buy up front and it has loot crates). Some other games tried their hands at it I think but didn't really kick up quite a fuss, probably because they weren't good games to begin with.

However the one that started this current firestorm is Overwatch. It was the first (to my memory) purchase-up-front game with lootboxes tied into it that succeeded. Moreso then CSGO. This in fact puts Blizzard's recent attempt to shit on EA with their "We made Starcraft 2 free with no microtransactions" spiel fucking hilarious really because this whole mess is kinda their fault to begin with.

Overwatch was a mistake.
 
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I love it. EA may actually lose the Star Wars license over this as well as fucking up a business model for an entire industry. Couldn't have happened to a better company.

Disney has no qualms at all about cutting your throat if you fuck with one of its precious franchises. Mattel knows this, after Disney fired them and replaced them with Hasbro for the Disney princesses toys, a deal worth $500 million. Star Wars is obviously bigger. I don't know how much the vidya end is worth, but I can't imagine it's less than hundreds of millions of dollars.

And this is money EA is getting. I'm not sure what Disney's cut of that is, but if they're not getting one, and these dipshits are tarnishing the franchise, it's not going to go well for them.

You don't fuck with the Mouse. Not for long, anyway.
 
Having it in Star Wars attracted the normies, and got the attention of the parents of the kids who were begging mom for a credit card to get more loot boxes.

Or about as often, parents suddenly noticing thousands of dollars of charges on their accounts because they were dumb enough to let them hook up their credit cards to their gaming accounts of whatever sort. That's a standard trick both of EA and other scammy licensed mobile game companies. Have a confusing interface for the purchase of that kind of thing, like powerups or gems or whatever other in-game currency there is, so that it's pretty easy to accidentally click one of them and then get charged for it. Then put shit like $99.99 "bargains" on the list, knowing some kids will either accidentally or ignorantly click it. Plus they also have their idiot whales like John Flynt who will deliberately spend thousands on it, their tards like Chris who will rack up thousand on Tapped Out, etc.

It's a scam, it's deceptive, it's intended to be deceptive, and they just hope to get away with it. They're crooks.
 
No that is Microsoft.

http://nichegamer.com/2017/11/21/be...oot-boxes-equal-to-gambling-vows-to-ban-them/ you can find the guy here btw. If you want to laugh at his ramblings or w/e.
Shit. This is long and probably super dumb but here. Skip to the end for the tl;dr. I had a decent amount of time to kill in between Thanksgiving preparations:

Well, just to educate myself and not be lazy, and even though I usually don't use wikipedia for things most of the time, I DO actually use it for simple factual lists like what games were released on given platforms or by given companies, because at the very least when it comes to plain lists of what a company has produced or what games are on what consoles, the guys over at wikipedia have the sense to not fuck it up over dumb shit. Usually.

So, just glancing at Wikipedia's List of Electronic Arts games, it's a lot of fucking sports. I'm an everyman kind of gamer, I like most games. I even like simple puzzle games if I'm bored and have nothing else to do. But I've never really been a fan of sports games. And going through the list from 2015 onward, looks like they released 42 individual games, so long as I didn't miscount. 18 of these games are sports games, ranging from hockey to racing to basketball and more. Going back any farther feels pointless because it's still littered with NHL and FIFA and the like with other stuff in the mix.

Now I'M not a sports game fan, but I know it has a demographic of some kind. So perhaps that's making decent money. But, and maybe I'm wrong in my understanding since this is mostly a matter of opinion, I don't see anyone buying, say, all the FIFA games instead of just buying the latest one. I usually wouldn't, and that's actually the main turnoff about sports games for me is that companies always come out with new ones, and I've seen evidence enough in the past to show that some games in series like FIFA and NHL are pretty much slightly altered clones of the previous installment.

But let's look at the rest for the past almost three years to get an idea. After all, we still have 24 games left to go after counting off all the sports titles. Now, turns out we can actually knock that number down even more with zero substance. One, two of those games were cancelled. Two, like an idiot I didn't think to initially disregard the five unreleased titles slated for 2018 on that list.

So not counting cancelled games, unreleased games, and sports games, that leaves a list of 17 games produced by EA in the last about three years. So let's look through that. Off the bat, three are Star Wars. Galaxy of Heroes, Battlefront, and Battlefront 2. However, Galaxy of Heroes is an iOS and Android game. I specifically point that out since I'm not much of a phone gamer, and, admittedly, I personally don't hold mobile phone games in as high standard/appraisal as console and PC games.

Of the remaining 14, three are Sims. Except, SimCity BuildIt is another phone game, which Wikipedia actually states is "a freemium game, which means that the player can play without buying virtual currency, although they can use real money to speed up progress". The other two aren't even actual standalone games, but rather expansion packs for The Sims 4, which was released all the way back in September of 2014.

11 left, and four of these are also mobile phone games. Specifically, Bejeweled Stars, Peggle Blast, Minions Paradise, and The Secret Life of Pets Unleashed. Now, discussing these, I can't even find a subsection in Wikipedia's article on the Secret Life of Pets movie about a game, let alone a page for the game itself. Some casual google fu however, shows the first result is a statement on EA's website that "We’re retiring The Secret Life of Pets: Unleashed on mobile on May 22, 2017.". FYI, the game released on June 22, 2016.

Further detail: "On March 23, 2017, we’ll disable in-app purchases using real-world money. Don’t worry — you can still use your Gold Coins to buy extra Power Ups so you can keep making powerful matches until the game is no longer playable online on May 22, 2017. After May 22, you will still be able play the game offline, but multiple features (such as downloading levels or accessing the store, social features, Roadside Rewards or Fetch) will no longer be available."

Similarly, I can't find shit on the wikipedia page for Peggle Blast. I see a tidbit on PopCap becoming a subsidiary to EA in 2013, announcing Peggle 2 at 2013's E3. But nothing specifically about "Peggle Blast". Looking at the Google Play store page for it, I don't see a release date, but I see "Updated: October 15, 2015", "Contains ads - Offers in-app purchases", and "In-app Products: $0.99 - $99.99 per item". Well that sounds like a shit game.

The other two are a Bejeweled clone and a Minions themed building game that got released in April of 2015 and shitcanned in May of 2017.

So through all my trudging through this information, I am down to seven games. Those are Battlefield Hardline, Battlefield 1(actually the fifteenth installment according to Wikipedia), Titanfall 2, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Unravel, and ME Andromeda.

I believe I saw a post somewhere on this forum about the guys at EA actually wanting microtransactions of sorts in Plants vs. Zombies 2 once upon a time, and no one here needs to be reminded what a shitshow Andromeda was. I haven't actually played Mirror's Edge Catalyst but I hear it's alright. Unravel looks like an interesting enough puzzle platformer to give a shot. And then you just have the two Battlefield games and Titanfall 2.

And that's it. In actuality, EA has produced 35 games within the last almost three years, and dominantly these have been sports games and mobile phone/freemium games, with a few interesting releases and Star Wars, probably the most mainstream thing they made a game about in this time period, dropped into the mix. Mass Effect is dead, was already dead, and Andromeda helped bury it. Dragon Age is dead. Deadspace is Dead without the space(sucks too because I liked it, even DS3, probably the last truly interesting series to me that they released).

So if Disney cuts Star Wars out of their mix, that literally just leaves mobile phone games, which are dominantly clones and freemium crap, and sports games, with an occasional game unrelated to either category getting released.
 
Sort of. Really the asian companies started it first in their MMOs and it spread to the west along with their shitty F2P mmo's but that seemed like the end of it at the time.
Then Valve introduced the idea into tf2 (which was free by that time) and CSGO (Which you buy up front and it has loot crates). Some other games tried their hands at it I think but didn't really kick up quite a fuss, probably because they weren't good games to begin with.

However the one that started this current firestorm is Overwatch. It was the first (to my memory) purchase-up-front game with lootboxes tied into it that succeeded. Moreso then CSGO. This in fact puts Blizzard's recent attempt to shit on EA with their "We made Starcraft 2 free with no microtransactions" spiel fucking hilarious really because this whole mess is kinda their fault to begin with.

Overwatch was a mistake.

Actually Overwatch is regarded as having done loot boxes right. Since the boxes contain nothing of actual gameplay value and just cosmetics, putting money into them is functionally a waste if you're a dedicated player. If you're like me and don't have a whole lot of time to invest in the game, they make sense, but the dedicated Overwatch player is probably getting plenty of boxes just by gameplay.

Yes, it's still gambling but it's not like BFII where the gambling has a tangible effect on gameplay or like CSGO where the skins have real world monetary value. The CSGOLotto fiasco clearly didn't teach anyone anything.
 
Sorry, but you can't mention this announcement without having to show video of it. It's amazing.

I had to watch that a second time to make sure I saw that right. That was one of the most limpdicked game announcements I've ever seen.

Just more clarification by the by: From the looks of it, I'd say EA's mobile games are dying? Secret Life of Pets Unleashed and Minions Paradise got shitcanned. Not sure how much money Peggle or Bejeweled Stars rakes in. Looks like most of their profit is Star Wars because of how mainstream it is, and sports games.

So if they lose Star Wars, mobile games lose their charm, and they just have sports left, I wonder. I've heard they make so much fucking money off sports games they don't even have to pretend to care about developing actual good games.
 
Actually Overwatch is regarded as having done loot boxes right. Since the boxes contain nothing of actual gameplay value and just cosmetics, putting money into them is functionally a waste if you're a dedicated player. If you're like me and don't have a whole lot of time to invest in the game, they make sense, but the dedicated Overwatch player is probably getting plenty of boxes just by gameplay.

Yes, it's still gambling but it's not like BFII where the gambling has a tangible effect on gameplay or like CSGO where the skins have real world monetary value. The CSGOLotto fiasco clearly didn't teach anyone anything.
I'm well aware of how overwatch's boxes work. That still doesn't change my point that this shit really got inflamed when blizzard made a big success off of it, cosmetics or not.

Also I think locking cosmetics behind gambling mechanics is still super shitty. I don't care how they try to justify it.
 
I had to watch that a second time to make sure I saw that right. That was one of the most limpdicked game announcements I've ever seen.

Just more clarification by the by: From the looks of it, I'd say EA's mobile games are dying? Secret Life of Pets Unleashed and Minions Paradise got shitcanned. Not sure how much money Peggle or Bejeweled Stars rakes in. Looks like most of their profit is Star Wars because of how mainstream it is, and sports games.

So if they lose Star Wars, mobile games lose their charm, and they just have sports left, I wonder. I've heard they make so much fucking money off sports games they don't even have to pretend to care about developing actual good games.

The best thing about EA is their greed blinds them. If they make a game and it doesn't instantly make ten billion dollars on launch day and 30 trillion dollars in pre-orders and DLC then they toss it. After they lose Star Wars along with any credibility they had left, they won't make any money, because they'll refuse it. They're all go big or go home. They'll keep trying to churn out shitty games with no relation or coherency, which to be fair they already do, but now it won't make as much money and they'll be furious.
 
I'm well aware of how overwatch's boxes work. That still doesn't change my point that this shit really got inflamed when blizzard made a big success off of it, cosmetics or not.

Also I think locking cosmetics behind gambling mechanics is still super shitty. I don't care how they try to justify it.

Blizzard made it so pervasive, they're working loot boxes into Star Craft. They completely redesigned Heroes of the Storm to emphasise the boxes.
 
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