The triple A video game developer Electronic Arts (EA) is under serious fire with the release of its newest game “Star Wars Battlefront 2”. The Battlefront serious has been acclaimed as one of the greatest for a long time. EA two years ago released their first version of this series “Star Wars Battlefront” and it was received moderately well as fairly well made game. Recently however, EA’s reputation of using microtransactions, pay-to-win tactics, and loot crates has caught up with them.

The idea of using microtransactions to make players pay real money to access content to get a leg up against players who don’t spend money to win has long been held as a poor practice by fans and other developers alike. EA on the other hand has found a way to work this into almost every game they’ve made. For fans, Battlefront 2 seems to be the last straw. As the game drew closer to release, news came out that EA was having loot crates (boxes that will give you random items) as part of the progression system in the game. This means that players who buy loot crates with real money can get better gear faster than people who don’t making it a pay-to-win system.

EA claims this wasn’t their intention (despite providing guaranteed rare loot from special paid boxes), and they shut down the system temporarily and started a Reddit post to try and talk to fans. The Reddit post quickly became the most downvoted (disliked) post in Reddit history, with EA scrambling to fix their publicity issue. Fans all over were saying they’ve had enough with EA trying to force extra money out of players instead of just releasing a good game.

While fans fought against EA, the Belgian Gaming Commission began its own investigation of the possibility that loot boxes and similar methods are a form of gambling. With the commission after them and fans rioting, company Electronic Arts may have a hard time recovering from this issue. As for the rest of the gaming world, loot boxes could become illegal. For games like “Overwatch”, which uses loot boxes as cosmetic rewards that have no effect on gameplay, this could completely throw progression on its head. As this matter continues the gaming world may see some serious changes in the near future.