Disney might have saved EA from an even bigger catastrophe before the game released, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz. Apparently, Disney called EA to let them know how displeased they were about the handling of the Battlefront 2 microtransactions.
Battlefront 2 had a rather disastrous launch after it came out that EA was adding in a great deal of grinding to Battlefront 2 in order to unlock well-known heroes like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Fritz apparently wrote an article that talked about how Disney contacted EA to let them know about Disney CEO Bob Igner’s “worry” about their handling of the game.
An attempt by EA to “explain” themselves by saying that they wanted the heroes to feel like a reward for dedicated play became the most-downvoted post in Reddit history, and even EA cutting the required credits to unlock their heroes by 75% didn’t help, because they also cut down on the campaign completion award (20,000 credits) by 75%, taking it down to 5,000.
This isn’t the only Star Wars game that EA has mucked up recently either, after they canned production of a Star Wars game developed by Visceral Games that was originally going to be single-player and story-driven in favor of a multiplayer-focused game, which sparked its own debate about how relevant single-player games were in this day and age with games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, and more being given as pro-single player examples.
Disney may have given EA the exclusive rights to creating Star Wars games, but if EA keeps messing things up like they did with the Battlefront 2 microtransactions, EA may find itself suddenly without a potential goldmine of money all due to the insatiable greed of their executives and shareholders.
Either way, since the Battlefront 2 microtransactions will be coming back eventually, we’ll just have to see if EA comes up with a way to make them not as intrusive to avoid making Disney any more displeased.
