Entry #8 | Pay to Win

Hello again! I was scrolling through the news feed on my iPhone and came across this article from CNBC which contends that Gamers are overreacting to EA's 'Star Wars' controversy, publishers should raise price. Whoa! Back up the train a sec. This is a new spin on what has actually occurred. Having seen a few news stories on this topic over the last week, and being a veteran gamer, this immediately caught my attention. So upon the initial perusal I noticed that there are a lot of bank names mentioned in this article, which translates to capital markets. In my experience, that usually means people out of touch with the reality in which most people in the world exist.

For anyone not aware, the pending release of the next "Star Wars" movie is imminent and there is also a "Star Wars" game, titled Battlefront II, which was released by EA Games this past week on the 17th of November. The week prior to this release, the player movement started once they realized that after paying $79.99 for the game, that characters such as Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker were locked behind additional paid content. In a posted reply on Reddit by a EACommunityTeam member, Kotaku reported that their justification for micro-transactions shattered the record on Reddit for the most downvoted comment recorded on this website. The initial estimates reported by Rolling Stone (here) to unlock this paid in-game content amounted to an estimated 4,528 hours of playtime, or $2,100.

In the wake of this negative publicity, it is reported by IGN that an executive at Disney reached out to EA to voice their concern with this negative publicity. The impact of this conversation is speculation but EA initially lowered the costs of these micro-transactions and ultimately pulled them, for the short term at least. This situation gained the attention of governments around the world and The Guardian has reported (here) that regulators are now considering whether loot boxes, which are in-game content, should be regulated as gambling.

This has proven interesting to watch as events have progressed over the last two weeks. In my experience, video games being pay to win is more common than not and so with the events unfolding it appears that there may be action to prevent this type of predatory behavior in the market. I wouldn't hold out too much hope though since the lure of profits never goes away. For the short term though, the voice of the players made a difference and that is a good sign, in my opinion. If you agree or disagree, please let me know in the comments below. I hope everyone has a good week. Until next time, take care, everyone!