Uh oh.

canadascott

Banned in Belgium! (Or at least they're making noises.)

http://www.pcgamer.com/belgium-says-loot-boxes-are-gambling-wants-them-banned-in-europe/

championshewolf

Yea, the States ESRB has ruled them as not gambling, with a half-assed but semi sound argument, but it is still contestable. Regardless, this is probably going to get more noise as time goes on. The States will probably be longer due to lobbyists and such and the game industry basically being in control of the ESRB at this point. But, subjectively I can see both sides of the argument. I don't know where to stand on it long term though, especially considering subscriptions have essentially died off at this point.

spinnytop

Gambling shouldn't be illegal to begin with. So long as the person spending their money is made aware of the fact that what they get back will be subject to chance, there's no reason for it to be against the law.

jennymachx

Gambling isn't illegal.

Providing a gambling service to a minor or teen who doesn't meet the minimum legal age to gamble (between 18 to 21 depending on country / state) IS illegal.

Overwatch has a PEGI 12 rating and Battlefront 2 has Teen, just to use current popular games as examples. Since lootboxes are gambling systems but are part of video games and not actual traditional gambling services like casinos or lotteries, there's a current legal grey area now.

beezeeze

In a loot box you always get something in return, it should be items that are at least worth some of if not most of the price of the box itself with a random chance to get more valuable items as incentive for people to buy more loot boxes. collectable trading cards have been around for years and I can see a similar system working to make loot boxes more fair by at least guaranteeing some kind of rare-ish item with every purchase, something they could trade or sell to recoup for the loss of not getting the thing that they wanted.

jennymachx

> @beezeeze said:
> In a loot box you always get something in return, it should be items that are at least worth some of if not most of the price of the box itself with a random chance to get more valuable items as incentive for people to buy more loot boxes. collectable trading cards have been around for years and I can see a similar system working to make loot boxes more fair by at least guaranteeing some kind of rare-ish item with every purchase, something they could trade or sell to recoup for the loss of not getting the thing that they wanted.

It's definitely a step in the right direction if loot boxes followed trading card standards where a defined number of common, uncommon and rare items are guaranteed with every unlock.

A more significant reason for the ongoing backlash is that games sold at premium prices are having game content locked behind such a system, nevermind if it actually followed the trading card standard or not. Battlefront 2 was already setting a baffling precedent by locking player progress and unlocking of things like new weapons, upgrades and heroes behind loot boxes, introducing a pay2win element to the game that should be something exclusive to F2P games, not premium-priced games where there's an expectation that progress scaled off time-investment and skill. Heck, EA already expects players to pay $100 to get the "Deluxe" edition and unlock the starter stuff that comes with that edition.

They could put that kind of content in DLC packs if they wanted like in the past, but hey, why sell those things are set prices when you can lock them behind gamble boxes and squeeze even more money than necessary out of the players' pockets. They want to do that? Okay, just go the F2P route and stop using the business model for premium-priced games.

sterga

Hawaii Rep. Chris Lee is going for regulation against loot boxes. That blew up fast. Good job EA.​​

avianos

​​

nepht

canadascott said:

Banned in Belgium! (Or at least they're making noises.)

http://www.pcgamer.com/belgium-says-loot-boxes-are-gambling-wants-them-banned-in-europe/

EA might have just screwed up every MMO around these days. Good job idiots.

jennymachx

I'll laugh like an idiot if Disney revokes EA's exclusive Star Wars game development rights.

jonsills

So, when does the EU lose access to Kinder Eggs for a stupid reason? (We never had them in the States for a different stupid reason.) 'Cause if lockboxes are gambling because you might not value what comes out, so are Kinder Eggs.

markhawkman

jonsills said:

So, when does the EU lose access to Kinder Eggs for a stupid reason? (We never had them in the States for a different stupid reason.) 'Cause if lockboxes are gambling because you might not value what comes out, so are Kinder Eggs.

So true. No one thinks twice about letting kids buy toys that have random loot in them. Pokémon cards anyone? Those plastic capsule dispensers? how is this any different?

magpieuk2014

Gambling legislation isn't standardised across the EU so a ban in Belgium would only apply there. However I know there have been plenty of questions in the UK about this subject already... boxes of the kind you have in CO are fine; the game is playable without them, you have options to buy items directly from in-game currency without there being a lottery aspect to the purchase.

The problem is with the AAA games which cost £50 and then want you to spend another £25-50 to unlock content; fine if it was DLC, not fine if they start adding a lottery aspect to it so that you spend your £25 and might not get what you wanted.

markhawkman

Then there's systems where you might get NOTHING. Those are the real problem. Especially when it's a game with random costume unlocks that aren't tradable. IIRC part of the issue with Overwatch is getting unlocks you already have. It amounts to not getting anything.

avianos

The "always winning a smaller price" should not be considered as an excuse
with that logic casinos which give away freebies should not be considered as gambling​​

guyhumual

jonsills said:

So, when does the EU lose access to Kinder Eggs for a stupid reason? (We never had them in the States for a different stupid reason.) 'Cause if lockboxes are gambling because you might not value what comes out, so are Kinder Eggs.

Are kinder eggs gambling though? They're a candy with a toy inside, not sure the toys are collectible or even rare, they're basically a bonus to go with the candy. Now when you move onto cards or other blind collectibles that's an interesting distinction. One might argue that they're gambling as well. However, the big difference there they're mainly a physical purchase, often bought in person, with real currency whereas a virtual product bought with credit cards is probably subject to more abuse.

jonsills

And when you open a lockbox in CO, you're getting some Drifter Salvage. In fact, it's the only way to get Drifter Salvage, so you could be said to be opening the boxes to get that. All that other stuff, which you may or may not value? It's a bonus, and you're definitely getting some kind of bonus.

STO's boxes are the same way, except what you get is called Lobi Crystals. In either case, you get something of value in exchange for your purchase of a key (or keys). Also, you don't even have to use online purchasing, as the keys are readily available in exchange for the in-game currency (Reputation here, Energy Credits in STO). I've spent Zen on keys in CO, because sometimes I really want something that's in a box and I get 500 Zen per month with my LTS. In STO, though, every key I've ever used has come off the Exchange - they generally run in the area of 5 million EC, and I've currently got that much on each of at least five toons, and somewhere around 25 more in my account bank.

(I still haven't won any of the things I wanted, but I've earned thousands of Globals by selling things from lockboxes I didn't want in the AH, and something similar with the STO Exchange - TOS bridge officer ability boxes, unopened, can fetch over a million EC each, and those are fairly frequent drops from Undiscovered Lockboxes.)

spinnytop

Considering our loot boxes appear to be helping to keep CO afloat I'm not sure why anyone who likes this game would be cheering on a movement that wants to make them illegal. I'm sure there are a lot of other games out there in a similar situation. Just another misguided movement that doesn't fully consider the consequences.

Also, as far as children are concerned, how does a child spend money online? Are they mailing their piggy bank to the game company? Children don't generally have access to things like credit/debit cards, so how could a child purchase such a loot box anyways? If their parents are giving them access to their card then they should be asking "btw what's this for?" and if the parent/holder of the card approves of the purchase, then it's not the child purchasing it. If the parent didn't bother to ask then that was their mistake.

I don't see any reason that a kid purchasing a loot box with in-game currency that they earned should be illegal.

avianos

Too be honest, I believe CO's Lootboxes are pretty tame consider everything inside it is tradeable, its mostly cosmetics (costumes and travel powers) EXCEPT of the ultimates and the non-fun devices
and since they removed the Legion gear, they are no longer Pay to Win​​

championshewolf

Well if this movement keeps going, as it most likely will, Champions, Star Trek Online and Neverwinter are surely in trouble. Since loot boxes are fastly being declared Gambling, these games will either have to be slapped with a mature rating, or be shut down as a result.Champions specifically won't survive without the loot boxes. STO and Neverwinter are probably just as bad off.

sterga

I bet the casino industry would love to be unregulated by simply claiming "but you always win something" with the fabulous prize of a penny just for playing.

Boo hoo. The video game industry might be forced into acting like decent human beings instead of obsessive cash vampires. Loot boxes probably aren't going away, they'll just be regulated. Casinos still exist despite being regulated.

I don't believe Cryptic is going to magically shut down just because they have to do basic things like disclose the odds of winning or pay some extra taxes with loot box revenue. And it's something that may take years if it actually goes anywhere at all.​​

championshewolf

Yes, the impact of this will be felt and will be more reverberation than people think it will be. Regardless of the argument of ignorance used, this will force reviews in other areas. Magic: The Gathering will be most prime since it is essentially a loot box system and has avoided being declared gambling for years, despite the argument of ignorance used to say it is not. And intentionally manipulative system trying to claim you always get a rare in every pack, despite most of the rares in Magic are garbage, and only hold any value to a select few people.

So this is going to blow up and become even greater issue long term. Oversight is needed, for sure, and predatory behavior curbed, but making excuses on either side with arguments of ignorance without looking at the consequences is just baffling to me. Because they will just look at other ways to get you, such as raising the price of drinks and food.

markhawkman

I don't think there's any sane way to apply government regulation to things like this. How would you use red tape to define what is or isn't adequate value for money?

spinnytop

markhawkman said:

I don't think there's any sane way to apply government regulation to things like this. How would you use red tape to define what is or isn't adequate value for money?

A very good point. Some folks might think that this is just gonna be a clean sweep "get rid of it all!" type thing, but that's likely to be extremely far from the truth. You can walk into a Casino and lose your entire life savings in one sitting, so that's the bar when it comes to gambling - loot boxes tend to sail clear and far above that. Law makers could say "the customer needs to get something useful from each opened loot box, guaranteed" but then they need to argue about what "useful" means in the context of a video game, with that conversation having to deal with the realization that useful means different things in different games. Someone could say "these rares are useless" but I'm sure the developers have an explanation for why they're not.

To use our loot boxes as an example, anything you get out of them could be considered useful - even duplicate items can be sold for resources. Let's take Fortnite's lootboxes as an example - once again everything is technically useful since even if I get a blueprint for a weapon I already have, or a survivor I don't need, both can be recycled into XP that I can use to level up my other weapons and survivors. If the ruling was that every loot box needs to contain a schematic for something I don't already have it still wouldn't even ensure that I'm getting something I'll end up using.

What seems like a reasonable thing is what Silverspar mentioned - showing the chances involved. If every item in a lockbox showed the % chance to get that item next to it it might even boost sales of lockboxes. With no number we just have this nebulous chance that we always feel is super tiny. Once you see a number you start doing fallacious mental math ( see Gambler's Fallacy ) about how you're likely to get the thing after just X boxes.

Is it likely they'll ban lootboxes entirely? Well, did they close down the casinos? If casinos are "acting like decent human beings" according to the law, then lootboxes and the companies behind them are likely pretty safe.

Or they'll ban lockboxes, CO's source of revenue will dry up, and we can end the most active development period in this game in years by shutting it down. See you all at the "victory" party! o/

championshewolf

markhawkman said:

I don't think there's any sane way to apply government regulation to things like this. How would you use red tape to define what is or isn't adequate value for money?

There's regulations on official gambling, so I don't see how you couldn't. The States have this weird colloquial fear of regulations based on lies mostly. Requiring oversight, transparency, making gambling a mature rated item, etc, these are not things that would make problems or be hard for the government to accomplish. The ESRB was created by the games industry to appease the morale bankruptcy of lazy parents in the 90s after games like Mortal Kombat came out, but the ESRB has proven to be corrupt and rates things based on loose criteria depending on their own pocket books. Games that are violent and have some morally questionable content, such as scantily clad girls, will get away with a Teen rating, but a similar game (Champions is an example) is forced to get rid of outfits with "boob windows" or else will get a mature rating despite lack of blood and the closest thing to nudity is an anatomically incorrect ken doll.

The ESRB does not apply a fair and universal rating system from game to game and makes games mature rated despite having very little reason to be mature, except maybe one cuss word, or one potentially suggestive scene in it depending on mind set, yet other games depicting harsh war and violence get a Teen rating (Star Wars Battlefront and 2 for example). Or my favorite, they liberally use the term "sexual content" for things like kissing, hugging, moonlit fires or the ominous fade to black scenarios for many games, for no reason other than to slap it on there. Hell, even games like Final Fantasy 8, which had "themes" (I am using that term loosely with that story) of love, has a Suggestive Themes on a Teen rated game. If it was rated today it would undoubtedly be instead called Sexual Content.

jennymachx

Well if companies like EA and WB didn't start pushing locking progress and base content behind loot boxes, by using a system that only has a proper place in freemium games and not triple A premium-priced ones that games like Battlefront 2 and Shadow of War are supposed to be, if they didn't treat their customers like a bunch of stupid exploitable cash cows that will pay for anything and everything being thrown at them, then this whole mess could have been avoided.

I don't know how games like CO will be affected in the long run. Sure, it could mean that CO might shut down if PWE / Cryptic don't figure out an alternative system to generate revenue if loot box systems become prohibited, but at the same time I want to see the precedent being set by a games like Battlefront 2 and Shadow of War shut down for good.

markhawkman

championshewolf said:

The States have this weird colloquial fear of regulations based on lies mostly.

You say that like you think Americans wrote V for Vendetta... (spoiler: it was a British guy)

championshewolf said:

The ESRB was created by the games industry to appease the morale bankruptcy of lazy parents in the 90s after games like Mortal Kombat came out, but the ESRB has proven to be corrupt and rates things based on loose criteria depending on their own pocket books.

I do personally feel that the ESRB is about as useful as the Comics Code Authority, or Better Business Bureau, But....

championshewolf said:

Games that are violent and have some morally questionable content, such as scantily clad girls, will get away with a Teen rating, but a similar game (Champions is an example) is forced to get rid of outfits with "boob windows" or else will get a mature rating despite lack of blood and the closest thing to nudity is an anatomically incorrect ken doll.

Given what there IS in the way of skimpy outfits in CO.... I'm not sure how a lack of boob windows hurts the game... if we actually lack them. I never bothered to look.

spinnytop said:

What seems like a reasonable thing is what Silverspar mentioned - showing the chances involved. If every item in a lockbox showed the % chance to get that item next to it it might even boost sales of lockboxes. With no number we just have this nebulous chance that we always feel is super tiny. Once you see a number you start doing fallacious mental math ( see Gambler's Fallacy ) about how you're likely to get the thing after just X boxes.

This is about as far as any sensible person would go with trying to regulate it. I'm not sure I'd generally describe politicians as sensible though.

championshewolf

Your first statement obviously the point just flew over your head. Since the 80s, in particular when Reagan became president, the Republican party in particular and large swaths of people in the States have been trying very hard to deregulate this country to based on many fabricated lies by lobbyists. But that's political and I won't get into it. This has nothing to do with comics but just a factual thing.

Second point, it's actually again a proven statement the ESRB arose because of parents in the States getting upset at game content through the use of fear tactics, such as Jack Thompson saying games were murder simulators. Parents, of course, did not want to accept responsibility for not parenting properly, hence why kids in the 80s and 90s were generally referred to as latchkey kids, or kids who came home to empty homes because of parents either working or other reasons and thus their "role model" tended to be television or video games. Parents coming home and instead of being parents, would often just let their kid sit in front of the television or play video games all day.

As far as point three, back in beta we use to have boob window outfits. You didn't have to do any special trickery with coloring like you do now. There was a literal cut out that was essentially a boob window on the outfit. However, sometime before open beta, these outfits were removed. We were told it was because of the ESRB threatening to raise the rating of Champions from Teen to Mature. In fact this is also when skin tones were mostly removed from costumes as well. Most people didn't accept it and thought Cryptic was just trying to monetize or whatever the outfits but multiple times it was explained that the outfits were removed because the ESRB basically told them to gain their Teen rating. All because of a simple article of clothing, that ironically, DCUO and City of Heroes could use freely. The ESRB has never been consistent with their ratings and most of it is from lobbying and pocket book.

championshewolf

jennymachx said:

Well if companies like EA and WB didn't start pushing locking progress and base content behind loot boxes, by using a system that only has a proper place in freemium games and not triple A premium-priced ones that games like Battlefront 2 and Shadow of War are supposed to be, if they didn't treat their customers like a bunch of stupid exploitable cash cows that will pay for anything and everything being thrown at them, then this whole mess could have been avoided.

I don't know how games like CO will be affected in the long run. Sure, it could mean that CO might shut down if PWE / Cryptic don't figure out an alternative system to generate revenue if loot box systems become prohibited, but at the same time I want to see the precedent being set by a games like Battlefront 2 and Shadow of War shut down for good.

There is no real alternative that won't involve rate hikes in the C-Store at the very least. But yes, the scum practice that EA pulled is going to cause long term problems down the line. The result, investors are going to at the very least demand box prices go up because they aren't going to like seeing their income dented.

nepht

Wonder if PWE is coming up with another business model as we speak. I wouldn't mind more paid for cosmetic items and less lock boxes in CO. At least I'd know what I am getting that way.

markhawkman

championshewolf said:

Your first statement obviously the point just flew over your head. Since the 80s, in particular when Reagan became president, the Republican party in particular and large swaths of people in the States have been trying very hard to deregulate this country to based on many fabricated lies by lobbyists. But that's political and I won't get into it. This has nothing to do with comics but just a factual thing.

Uh... interesting... point of view... Especially so when you consider how many regulations are based on little more than fear mongering... which was how the ESRB came to be.

championshewolf

markhawkman said:

Uh... interesting... point of view... Especially so when you consider how many regulations are based on little more than fear mongering... which was how the ESRB came to be.

*sighs* Not true but not even going to argue it.

spinnytop

markhawkman said:

Uh... interesting... point of view... Especially so when you consider how many regulations are based on little more than fear mongering... which was how the ESRB came to be.

This statement is similar to the following statement o3o

championshewolf said:

Second point, it's actually again a proven statement the ESRB arose because of parents in the States getting upset at game content through the use of fear tactics, such as Jack Thompson saying games were murder simulators.

So that's interesting o3o

---

Related: I'm guessing this was part of the thing where some senator said that the game Night Trap allowed the player to live out fantasies of capturing, assaulting, and murdering women. When in fact the game had the player trying to save people from being captured by things that are about as scary as the putties from Power Rangers. A particularly hilarious moment of "old people don't understand the thing".

championshewolf

spinnytop said:

markhawkman said:

Uh... interesting... point of view... Especially so when you consider how many regulations are based on little more than fear mongering... which was how the ESRB came to be.

This statement is similar to the following statement o3o

championshewolf said:

Second point, it's actually again a proven statement the ESRB arose because of parents in the States getting upset at game content through the use of fear tactics, such as Jack Thompson saying games were murder simulators.

So that's interesting o3o

---

Related: I'm guessing this was part of the thing where some senator said that the game Night Trap allowed the player to live out fantasies of capturing, assaulting, and murdering women. When in fact the game had the player trying to save people from being captured by things that are about as scary as the putties from Power Rangers. A particularly hilarious moment of "old people don't understand the thing".

ESRB isn't a regulation, is the problem. The ESRB is a contained and managed institution in the game industry. It's not codified or controlled by the government and there is no government oversight. So there is no regulation there. The ESRB is autonomous at that point and any decision they make is based on what food they ate that day, how much company X paid them, and who farted in the lounge that week. This is why games in the States can have wildly different ratings despite having content that's relatively the same. If there was regulation there would be stricter codification of the ratings themselves and they would be more consistent across fields. It's the same with movie ratings which movie ratings are solely controlled by the movie industry, hence why a movie that is flagged R for swear words and another is PG-13 for the same swear words.

markhawkman

And how a movie can be recut to remove "objectionable material" to get a lower rating and not actually change the film in any meaningful way. Blah, blah. MPAA ratings would be atrocious if it was actual law.

jennymachx

championshewolf said:

There is no real alternative that won't involve rate hikes in the C-Store at the very least. But yes, the scum practice that EA pulled is going to cause long term problems down the line. The result, investors are going to at the very least demand box prices go up because they aren't going to like seeing their income dented.

Game companies have long remarked that games are getting more expensive to develop than in the past, and that the price of games haven't really scaled with inflation, with the common $60 retail price being used for so many years now. If box prices are to increase to make up for dropping the whole practice of having gamble box systems in premium triple-A games I would actually be okay with it.

sterga

Games haven't cost $60 for a long time. DLC, season passes, collector's edition. It's really hard to believe the game industry when they parrot out how games are SO expensive to make they HAVE to put loot boxes in and then we see: EA tells investors turning off Battlefront 2's microtransactions will not affect earnings...

That and we have never seen any proof that games are so expensive to make that they just have to have all this BS in them. As far as I know, most devs don't even get paid over time. Royalties are not a thing. Former devs talk about people that have jobs only because they're someone's buddy and don't actually do anything. Tens of million of dollars in tax breaks. Does anyone really believe a billion dollar company complaining about the cost of making games being so expensive with all the hinky garbage they do?

AAA studios absolutely lobby the government and have the cash to fight regulations. It is possible that nothing will happen outside of consumer distrust of the video game industry and a few months of bad PR. It's called being cynical, not ignorant.

And no, I don't see loot boxes having regulations attached to them being a major problem. It's not like China doesn't already have regulations for loot boxes and everyone still wants to launch their loot box infested games there. We have an entire industry built on gambling that functions just fine despite 100s of pages of regulations. Cryptic isn't some minuscule indie studio that can't afford to hire a lawyer to do some paperwork.

The big upside to regulation would be that companies have to do the things they should have been doing anyway.​​

nepht

A well made Star Wars game would not need loot boxes to make money. That said Battlefront 2 is not a a well made Star Wars game.

jennymachx

Well Season Passes and Collector's Editions are something additional and I don't think that detracts from the point I was trying to make. The base game containing the core content that makes it a complete game out of the box from start to finish when there isn't an BS element of locking endings behind a microtransaction/DLC like in Shadow of War, is commonly priced at around $60. Collector's Editions usually include bonus items that are supplemental to the core game's content and not an integral part of it, like exclusive skins and gear.

Season Passes are something else and still pretty much BS by expecting people to pay in advance for stuff that developers aren't obligated to provide at a later time. Still, Season Passes are an extension of the core game.

Yeah, I know there are varying opinions about what qualifies as the core content and how DLCs and Season Passes are supposed to be included in the base game at no further cost, but I personally don't work in game development to intricately know how expensive / inexpensive game development is supposed to be so I'm trying not to be too cynical. If game developers do cave in to public demand / law by dropping the whole loot box thing in their triple-A games altogether, then I think the expectation of retail prices going up is the least problematic thing to happen. I mean, an even more crappy thing they could decide to do is to divide a full game into several parts and then price each part at $60. That would really suck.

biffsmackwell

nepht said:

Wonder if PWE is coming up with another business model as we speak. I wouldn't mind more paid for cosmetic items and less lock boxes in CO. At least I'd know what I am getting that way.

Didn't work before, why would it start working now?

spinnytop

nepht said:

A well made Star Wars game would not need loot boxes to make money. That said Battlefront 2 is not a a well made Star Wars game.

BUT DA GRAAAAAAFFIX O3O

jennymachx said:

I mean, an even more crappy thing they could decide to do is to divide a full game into several parts and then price each part at $60. That would really suck.

Some people think that's what happened with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

legendarylycan

jennymachx wrote: »

I mean, an even more crappy thing they could decide to do is to divide a full game into several parts and then price each part at $60. That would really suck.

you mean like blizzard did with starcraft 2?​​

markhawkman

shadowfang240 said:

you mean like blizzard did with starcraft 2?​​

Or diablo 2...

I learned something about this game called "Kingdoms of Amalur" recently that feels relevant. KoA was planned to be a WoW style MMO. But it got released as a single player game instead... Why? The studio was poorly managed and spent more than they could afford to develop the game. Eventually they had to choose between releasing nothing and trying to recoup losses. Which seems similar to the situation with D2. Blizzard decided they needed money and released a partially finished game then released the rest of it later. D2 apparently made enough to keep going while KoA didn't make enough to cover development expenses and the studio went bankrupt. But the big difference is that KoA's development costs were probably about double what it would have cost Blizzard to make the game.

spinnytop

markhawkman said:

I learned something about this game called "Kingdoms of Amalur" recently that feels relevant. KoA was planned to be a WoW style MMO. But it got released as a single player game instead... Why? The studio was poorly managed and spent more than they could afford to develop the game. Eventually they had to choose between releasing nothing and trying to recoup losses. Which seems similar to the situation with D2. Blizzard decided they needed money and released a partially finished game then released the rest of it later. D2 apparently made enough to keep going while KoA didn't make enough to cover development expenses and the studio went bankrupt. But the big difference is that KoA's development costs were probably about double what it would have cost Blizzard to make the game.

Eh, not entirely accurate. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a single player game that was developed and released as a single player game. The same company was also developing an MMO at the same time in the main studio - KOAR was developed by a studio that 38 had purchased called Big Huge Games. I believe both were meant to be based on the same IP, but development on the MMO was happening in parallel, the MMO didn't turn into a single player. Kurt Schilling would never have settled for releasing only a single player game, his heart was stubbornly set on releasing an MMO which is basically the first and ultimate woe the company faced - he was willing to run the whole thing into the ground in pursuit of making the greatest MMO ever and... oh look, he did. Well, maybe the real first woe the company faced was that their owner Kurt was a professional baseball player and not somebody with a shred of experience in game development.

KoAR was pretty good, I played it.

legendarylycan

KoA was good in one major aspect...it had weapon types that are...shall we say, somewhat rare in other games, like chakrams

the only other game i've seen with that weapon type that PLAYERS can use is Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura​​

markhawkman

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem had them.

deadman20

nepht wrote: »

A well made Star Wars game would not need loot boxes to make money. That said Battlefront 2 is not a a well made Star Wars game.

The Pre-EA Battlefronts were pretty great, particularly the very first Battlefront. It actually felt like a warzone and it was awesome.

shadowfang240 wrote: »

jennymachx wrote: »

I mean, an even more crappy thing they could decide to do is to divide a full game into several parts and then price each part at $60. That would really suck.

you mean like blizzard did with starcraft 2?

Yeah, that was pretty poor. They did just make the first campaign entirely free for new players and starter editions though. That and if you had WoL already, you got HotS free as well with the recent entry of the SC2 Free to play. It ain't the same as the original Starcraft, but I still like the game.​​

jennymachx

EA just lost 3 billion dollars in stock value (8.5% down) because of the backlash.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/11/28/eas-day-of-reckoning-is-here-after-star-wars-game-uproar.html

legendarylycan

i wouldn't want to be an investor in EA right about now, that's for damn sure...hopefully the smarter stockholders saw this coming and cashed in before the drop​​

jennymachx

I'm willing to bet the majority of investors didn't see it coming. Star Wars is such a massively huge IP and it's easy to expect that a triple-A video game product using that IP will automatically sell like crazy, especially with the loot box system backed by the IP.

After the backlash from gamers and critics went full blown and prompted EA to temporarily disable lootboxes, Wall Street went into panic mode and so-called analysts started blaming gamers for overreacting and being entitled simply because investors couldn't cash out big like they expected to, the poor, poor things.