7 ms·

EA removes Battlefront 2 refund option as gamers mass-cancel pre-orders

93 points by artsandsci 9y ago

zaphar 9y ago
The comment itself doesn't seem all that terrible though. Perhaps a little tone deaf but not at all offensive.
- rf15 9y ago
  It snowballed a bit, but overall it reflects the disregard gamers feel from EA: they try to make a $60+ game that also has microtransactions (Games-as-a-Service) and everything that is buyable by microtransactions has to be impossible/extra tedious to achieve in regular play to bait the whales(their actual target demographic) into wasting a ton of money (while the average gamer is just plankton/social bait to EA). And then they try to bullshit their way out of it with this argument.
  - Thaxll 9y ago
    People don't want to pay for DLC, season pass, expansions basically nothing? How do you pay for upcoming content then? For the current price the game has a vast content.
    - emsy 9y ago
      That’s not the point at all. For example, look how many gamers complained about the Witcher DLC. What bothers players is day-1-DLC and non-cosmetic loot boxes in paid games.
      - skeletal88 9y ago
        Which Witcher DLC, who was complaining? I haven't seen anything but praise for CDPR for the Witcher games. The game was amazing, with free DLCs that are as big as some smaller games, and they had 2 expansions that people had to pay for. Everyone was happy.
        emsy 9y ago
        >I haven't seen anything but praise for CDPR for the Witcher games Yeah that was my point! No one complained because everyone saw it as fair.
    - danielbln 9y ago
      How do you get that from OP's post? OP specifically said it's about stuff `that is (..) impossible/extra tedious to achieve in regular play to bait the whales`.
    - rf15 9y ago
      Most publishers and developers do fine with reasonable microtransactions, DLC, season passes and so on. It's just EA that makes it extra inhuman in trying to squeeze out the last cent out of everyone (including bleeding out their studios), which in turn makes them so unpopular for developers/non-casual gamers.
    - tantivy 9y ago
      Maybe you've heard of Dota 2 or Overwatch, two massively profitable and popular games with no interactive content behind transactions. EA could have easily just made different cosmetic skins for the USS Enterprise (or whatever) with a hierarchy of rarities, stuck them in crates, and let the money roll in.
      - chimeracoder 9y ago
        > Maybe you've heard of Dota 2 or Overwatch, two massively profitable and popular games with no interactive content behind transactions. I agree with what you're saying, but there's a small amendment to that: with Overwatch, you can buy loot boxes for extra character skins or sprays. But the impact on the game is minimal[0]. Loot boxes start at $1 each (with volume discounts available), but you also get one for free every time you level up, which happens every 5 games or so[1], in addition to a loot box for every three arcade-mode games you win (up to three boxes per week). In my mind, this is the right way to do it: the content is good enough to be engaging and worth paying a small amount of money for if you really want a certain skin, but you can also decide never to pay one cent after you initially buy the game and still feel like you're getting the full experience. [0] There are a couple of cases where certain emotes can make it easy to hide in an unexpected location, affecting gameplay, but they're rare enough that the videos get shared widely, and once they're no longer secret, they don't impact the competitive meta-game measurably. In other words, it's self-correcting: there's no systematic way that buying loot boxes to get all the skins/emotes/sprays/etc. allows you to consistently improve your competitive advantage over other players. [1] Depends on whether or not you win, how well you personally play in each round, whether you're in a group, etc.
    - jvzr 9y ago
      I paid for all Battlefield season passes, and would continue to do so if given the option. The franchise has some of my most-played games (350+ hours in BF1, 150+ in BF4, 550+ in BF3). My only grief with the paid DLCs and season passes is the map segmentation: non-paying customers (well, those that didn't pay for the DLC) don't get the new maps, and then two parts of the customer base are segregated between two different sets of maps. I would be more than happy to see all new maps come for free, and I'd still pay for a season pass for new cosmetics/weapons/vehicles/whatever. Hope that makes sense
    - pm90 9y ago
      I don't mind paying extra if new features are released, including new characters and new schemes. But it seems like the main characters (e.g. Vader, Bobba Fett etc.) should be achievable. I mean, that's kinda the point of buying a franchise game right? You want to play as one of your favorite characters. This made me look around a bit and I came across this excellent piece explaining how the economy of the game is fucked up: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/can-ea-fix-whats-broken-with-star-wars-battlefront-iis-economy/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/can-ea-fix-whats-brok.... Maybe they should go the Valve way and hire an actual economist to design their economy?
  - omg_ketchup 9y ago
    If they made the end-game characters (Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, etc) 40+hours to get, and they DIDN'T have microtransactions to get them quickly, would gamers be complaining? Doubtful. They made the game HARD. That's good, that's what people asked for. Then they made the game EASY if you want to pay extra to make it easy. I think that's a fair trade, but that's clearly a minority opinion.
swarnie_ 9y ago
Is it possible this is all free marketing for EA and was planned? (or at least controlled after?) This customer base has no self control or long term opinions. Hell, i bet half the people downvoting on Reddit will still buy the game + creates before Christmas. The wider causal gaming community probably don't know or care.
- zacharycohn 9y ago
  There is no way a marketing department would approve that plan. I guarantee everyone over there is in full on damage control (how they're doing on that remains to be seen).
- djrogers 9y ago
  > Is it possible this is all free marketing for EA and was planned? ... > The wider causal gaming community probably don't know or care. Point 2 is absolutely correct, making the answer to your original question “highly unlikely”.
- whamlastxmas 9y ago
  I mean it worked for me as marketing. I'm a FPS gamer and didn't know this was coming out. It made me go look on footage on YT to see if it was something I'd like despite the drama (the answer was no).
trose 9y ago
And yet folks will keep falling for the CGI trailers and marketing hype EA churns out for every game. The only solution is to wholesale stop supporting ANY game EA produces.
- EpicEng 9y ago
  And a single whale can make up for literally hundreds of lost sales through micro-transactions.
  - spystath 9y ago
    Exactly! Microtransactions are there to grab the big spenders. Mobile "games" follow this pattern to the extreme. For example some guy spent $1M playing a mobile game ([0] and HN discussion [1]). Honestly I don't understand why game companies are left to exploit gullible people (adults and/or kinds) into what is essentially gambling. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/california-man-spent-1-million-playing-game-of-war/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/california-man-s... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165780
    - EpicEng 9y ago
      Yup, and making the game pay to win (as opposed to offering only cosmetic items for sale) means the whales are going to come out in full force. It really is gambling and I think it should be treated as such.
      - politician 9y ago
        Technically, to be gambling the company would need to give out prizes with monetary value. I agree that it's perhaps an oversight that dopamine release is not considered a prize under the existing 3-part test for gambling - chance, prizes, risk of loss.
        savanaly 9y ago
abrongersma 9y ago
The article only tells half the story. "EA eventually announced it will lower the character unlocking difficulty by 75 percent. But it seems this didn’t curb the outrage." From what I was reading last night they also reduced the currency rewarded by playing the main campaign. Thus making the cost reduction negligible. Looks like it was just a misdirection tactic by EA.
- SquareWheel 9y ago
  Is playing the campaign the main way that people earn currency? I would have expected it to be through multiplayer matches.
  - delecti 9y ago
    The campaign is 5-8 hours [1]. Perhaps in the long run most of a player's currency would come from multiplayer, initially a large chunk would have come through the campaign. [1] https://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-battlefront-2s-campaign-length-estimate-/1100-6454253/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-battlefront-2s-c...
- mrguyorama 9y ago
  Also worth noting, reducing the cost by 75% still means that darth vader costs roughly $65 or 10 hours of your time. That's one character. There are at least 6 others to purchase.
  - mrpotato 9y ago
    Wait, 10 hours of gameplay to unlock Vader? That's actually not too bad. I was under the impression that it was 10x that. Not that I'm going to buy this game, but 10hrs is easily attainable in 1 weekend. Especially if the game is fun.
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      A character that previous games let you play from the get-go and for free.
Cuuugi 9y ago
tl;dr EA are unethical jerks, and people that preorder from them (especially given EA's history) are stupid.
- castis 9y ago
  edit; nevermind, should have known better.
  - Cuuugi 9y ago
    Where did i say i didn't read the article? Tl;DR's are for people to not have to read the article, made by people that have read the article. I suppose I expect more from someone who has been here for almost 9 years.
- accatyyc 9y ago
  Guess I’m stupid! I played the 10 hour demo, and then pre-ordered, based on my own experience being that the game is really fun. The reddit complaints are blown way out of proportion.
  - jvzr 9y ago
    I'm interested in getting to know your experience after a couple tens of hours, when you get obliterated by some whales that got all the good loot for obscene amounts of money. Genuinely interested. I read someone here saying that most people will only play this game's multiplayer for 2O hours and then move on, and I suspect they are correct. And it will be exacerbated by the pay-to-win model
    - omg_ketchup 9y ago
      I don't think that's really fair- the early-unlock "Hero" characters are just as viable as the late-unlock "Hero" characters, they're just less famous. You get Yoda and The Emperor instead of Luke and Vader. They all kick equal amounts of ass.
  - synicalx 9y ago
bluetidepro 9y ago
Can mods update the title to the one of the site: "EA removes Battlefront 2 refund option as gamers cancel pre-orders en masse [Update: False alarm]" - Looks like this is actually not a problem. > Update: As pointed out by PCGamesN, it appears the refund button is disabled for all pre-orders on EA’s Origin store – not just for Star Wars: Battlefront 2. > While EA does indeed offer refunds for up to seven days after a pre-ordered game launches, the refund button only appears once the game is out. This means that anybody who wants to cancel their pre-order will have to go through the customer support chat by default. > Or alternatively, wait for the refund button to show up once Battlefront 2 launches officially on November 17.
- JamesUtah07 9y ago
  I disagree. Disabling all refunds is an obvious obfuscation for disabling BF2 refunds.
  - cavanasm 9y ago
    The update is that refunds aren't disabled, the system has always worked in this particular way for pre-orders less than 7 days before launch, and nothing has changed. When the game launches, the refund function is available for 24 hours from first start up.
- whamlastxmas 9y ago
  Did they change it today so this is how it works? Your quote doesn't really specify and I pretty much expect this sort of sneaky non-full-disclosure behavior from EA.
- synicalx 9y ago
  I'd heard and seen screenshots on Reddit showing the button being present prior to all this happening, and then disappearing. Is that not the case? EA's statement is not clear, it just says "the refund button only appears once the game is out" but doesn't clarify how long that has been the case. Knowing EA, that probably means "As of two hours ago, the refund button only appears once the game is out."
ralmidani 9y ago
I used to have a video game addiction. I once sat on my knees for 8 hours playing Mega Man 2 (I could barely unfold my legs afterwards). When I got Diablo in 1996, I stayed up for 40 hours playing it, to the point where I started clicking on hallucinatory demons on the screen. I am so happy I stopped playing video games before in-app purchases became a trend. Destroyed productivity was bad, but the stories about people flushing tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars down the drain terrify me. That could have been me.
jknoepfler 9y ago
With respect, I think a lot of people are missing the bigger issue here. Slowly, steadily, and imperfectly, mass culture is starting to demand authenticity from the companies that sell them products. The most downvoted comment on reddit, with something like 650k downvotes, is EA's predictably soulless PR response to the pricing complaints (which is now copy-pasted into every thread about p2win and overpriced microtransactions). This is part of a cultural shift. EA appears to be on the wrong side of it, and the traditional "community engagement" tactics they deployed backfired horrendously. Twenty years ago, you could adequately manage a mass consumer community with ads and some targeted engagement. As people's resistance to transparent inauthenticity grows (and it has been growing steadily for at least fifty years), it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage people one doesn't actually care about. Mass credulity is decreasing (slowly, steadily, imperfectly). As with all cultural shifts, there are contradictions and complexities. Yes, some kids in the "downvote brigade" will buy the game anyway, and there will be whales who spend too much money on the game. The problem for EA is that they won't be as numerous, and as time and culture march on they will eventually all but vanish. I don't think anyone in advertising or PR thinks their job is getting easier. And honestly, it should be difficult to sell people stupid baubles for large amounts of money. I think the rise of mass media exposed some holes in our collective cultural defenses that we've been patching up over two or three generations. This kind of backlash will become increasingly more frequent as large entertainment companies attempt and fail to adapt to the changing times. At the end of the day, some middle-aged cadre of smart, possibly even savvy and well-meaning PR people will try to adapt EA's (or whomever's) community engagement tactics, and they will find a new and creative (even laudable) ways to fail.
- mercer 9y ago
  I might be too pessimistic, but I'm inclined to believe that PR/marketing will figure out how to be 'authentic' or otherwise solve this problem well enough. There's lots of smart people who get paid to do so, and I think that trumps any disjointed mob behavior. In fact, it's quite possible EA is not at all surprised by this backlash and was simply 'optimizing'. This time they went a bit too far perhaps, so next time they'll be a bit nicer until all this is forgotten. I mean, we're talking about EA here. I don't recall a time where they weren't hated by most of Reddit, and I don't get the impression it's been much of a problem for them.

93 points by artsandsci 9y ago

zaphar 9y ago

The comment itself doesn't seem all that terrible though. Perhaps a little tone deaf but not at all offensive.

rf15 9y ago
It snowballed a bit, but overall it reflects the disregard gamers feel from EA: they try to make a $60+ game that also has microtransactions (Games-as-a-Service) and everything that is buyable by microtransactions has to be impossible/extra tedious to achieve in regular play to bait the whales(their actual target demographic) into wasting a ton of money (while the average gamer is just plankton/social bait to EA). And then they try to bullshit their way out of it with this argument.
- Thaxll 9y ago
  People don't want to pay for DLC, season pass, expansions basically nothing? How do you pay for upcoming content then? For the current price the game has a vast content.
  - emsy 9y ago
    That’s not the point at all. For example, look how many gamers complained about the Witcher DLC. What bothers players is day-1-DLC and non-cosmetic loot boxes in paid games.
    - skeletal88 9y ago
      Which Witcher DLC, who was complaining? I haven't seen anything but praise for CDPR for the Witcher games. The game was amazing, with free DLCs that are as big as some smaller games, and they had 2 expansions that people had to pay for. Everyone was happy.
      - emsy 9y ago
        >I haven't seen anything but praise for CDPR for the Witcher games Yeah that was my point! No one complained because everyone saw it as fair.
  - danielbln 9y ago
    How do you get that from OP's post? OP specifically said it's about stuff `that is (..) impossible/extra tedious to achieve in regular play to bait the whales`.
  - rf15 9y ago
    Most publishers and developers do fine with reasonable microtransactions, DLC, season passes and so on. It's just EA that makes it extra inhuman in trying to squeeze out the last cent out of everyone (including bleeding out their studios), which in turn makes them so unpopular for developers/non-casual gamers.
  - tantivy 9y ago
    Maybe you've heard of Dota 2 or Overwatch, two massively profitable and popular games with no interactive content behind transactions. EA could have easily just made different cosmetic skins for the USS Enterprise (or whatever) with a hierarchy of rarities, stuck them in crates, and let the money roll in.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > Maybe you've heard of Dota 2 or Overwatch, two massively profitable and popular games with no interactive content behind transactions. I agree with what you're saying, but there's a small amendment to that: with Overwatch, you can buy loot boxes for extra character skins or sprays. But the impact on the game is minimal[0]. Loot boxes start at $1 each (with volume discounts available), but you also get one for free every time you level up, which happens every 5 games or so[1], in addition to a loot box for every three arcade-mode games you win (up to three boxes per week). In my mind, this is the right way to do it: the content is good enough to be engaging and worth paying a small amount of money for if you really want a certain skin, but you can also decide never to pay one cent after you initially buy the game and still feel like you're getting the full experience. [0] There are a couple of cases where certain emotes can make it easy to hide in an unexpected location, affecting gameplay, but they're rare enough that the videos get shared widely, and once they're no longer secret, they don't impact the competitive meta-game measurably. In other words, it's self-correcting: there's no systematic way that buying loot boxes to get all the skins/emotes/sprays/etc. allows you to consistently improve your competitive advantage over other players. [1] Depends on whether or not you win, how well you personally play in each round, whether you're in a group, etc.
  - jvzr 9y ago
    I paid for all Battlefield season passes, and would continue to do so if given the option. The franchise has some of my most-played games (350+ hours in BF1, 150+ in BF4, 550+ in BF3). My only grief with the paid DLCs and season passes is the map segmentation: non-paying customers (well, those that didn't pay for the DLC) don't get the new maps, and then two parts of the customer base are segregated between two different sets of maps. I would be more than happy to see all new maps come for free, and I'd still pay for a season pass for new cosmetics/weapons/vehicles/whatever. Hope that makes sense
  - pm90 9y ago
    I don't mind paying extra if new features are released, including new characters and new schemes. But it seems like the main characters (e.g. Vader, Bobba Fett etc.) should be achievable. I mean, that's kinda the point of buying a franchise game right? You want to play as one of your favorite characters. This made me look around a bit and I came across this excellent piece explaining how the economy of the game is fucked up: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/can-ea-fix-whats-broken-with-star-wars-battlefront-iis-economy/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/can-ea-fix-whats-brok.... Maybe they should go the Valve way and hire an actual economist to design their economy?
- omg_ketchup 9y ago
  If they made the end-game characters (Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, etc) 40+hours to get, and they DIDN'T have microtransactions to get them quickly, would gamers be complaining? Doubtful. They made the game HARD. That's good, that's what people asked for. Then they made the game EASY if you want to pay extra to make it easy. I think that's a fair trade, but that's clearly a minority opinion.

swarnie_ 9y ago

Is it possible this is all free marketing for EA and was planned? (or at least controlled after?) This customer base has no self control or long term opinions. Hell, i bet half the people downvoting on Reddit will still buy the game + creates before Christmas. The wider causal gaming community probably don't know or care.

zacharycohn 9y ago
There is no way a marketing department would approve that plan. I guarantee everyone over there is in full on damage control (how they're doing on that remains to be seen).
djrogers 9y ago
> Is it possible this is all free marketing for EA and was planned? ... > The wider causal gaming community probably don't know or care. Point 2 is absolutely correct, making the answer to your original question “highly unlikely”.
whamlastxmas 9y ago
I mean it worked for me as marketing. I'm a FPS gamer and didn't know this was coming out. It made me go look on footage on YT to see if it was something I'd like despite the drama (the answer was no).

trose 9y ago

And yet folks will keep falling for the CGI trailers and marketing hype EA churns out for every game. The only solution is to wholesale stop supporting ANY game EA produces.

EpicEng 9y ago
And a single whale can make up for literally hundreds of lost sales through micro-transactions.
- spystath 9y ago
  Exactly! Microtransactions are there to grab the big spenders. Mobile "games" follow this pattern to the extreme. For example some guy spent $1M playing a mobile game ([0] and HN discussion [1]). Honestly I don't understand why game companies are left to exploit gullible people (adults and/or kinds) into what is essentially gambling. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/california-man-spent-1-million-playing-game-of-war/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/california-man-s... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165780
  - EpicEng 9y ago
    Yup, and making the game pay to win (as opposed to offering only cosmetic items for sale) means the whales are going to come out in full force. It really is gambling and I think it should be treated as such.
    - politician 9y ago
      Technically, to be gambling the company would need to give out prizes with monetary value. I agree that it's perhaps an oversight that dopamine release is not considered a prize under the existing 3-part test for gambling - chance, prizes, risk of loss.
      - savanaly 9y ago

abrongersma 9y ago

The article only tells half the story. "EA eventually announced it will lower the character unlocking difficulty by 75 percent. But it seems this didn’t curb the outrage." From what I was reading last night they also reduced the currency rewarded by playing the main campaign. Thus making the cost reduction negligible. Looks like it was just a misdirection tactic by EA.

SquareWheel 9y ago
Is playing the campaign the main way that people earn currency? I would have expected it to be through multiplayer matches.
- delecti 9y ago
  The campaign is 5-8 hours [1]. Perhaps in the long run most of a player's currency would come from multiplayer, initially a large chunk would have come through the campaign. [1] https://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-battlefront-2s-campaign-length-estimate-/1100-6454253/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-battlefront-2s-c...
mrguyorama 9y ago
Also worth noting, reducing the cost by 75% still means that darth vader costs roughly $65 or 10 hours of your time. That's one character. There are at least 6 others to purchase.
- mrpotato 9y ago
  Wait, 10 hours of gameplay to unlock Vader? That's actually not too bad. I was under the impression that it was 10x that. Not that I'm going to buy this game, but 10hrs is easily attainable in 1 weekend. Especially if the game is fun.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    A character that previous games let you play from the get-go and for free.

Cuuugi 9y ago

tl;dr EA are unethical jerks, and people that preorder from them (especially given EA's history) are stupid.

castis 9y ago
edit; nevermind, should have known better.
- Cuuugi 9y ago
  Where did i say i didn't read the article? Tl;DR's are for people to not have to read the article, made by people that have read the article. I suppose I expect more from someone who has been here for almost 9 years.
accatyyc 9y ago
Guess I’m stupid! I played the 10 hour demo, and then pre-ordered, based on my own experience being that the game is really fun. The reddit complaints are blown way out of proportion.
- jvzr 9y ago
  I'm interested in getting to know your experience after a couple tens of hours, when you get obliterated by some whales that got all the good loot for obscene amounts of money. Genuinely interested. I read someone here saying that most people will only play this game's multiplayer for 2O hours and then move on, and I suspect they are correct. And it will be exacerbated by the pay-to-win model
  - omg_ketchup 9y ago
    I don't think that's really fair- the early-unlock "Hero" characters are just as viable as the late-unlock "Hero" characters, they're just less famous. You get Yoda and The Emperor instead of Luke and Vader. They all kick equal amounts of ass.
- synicalx 9y ago

bluetidepro 9y ago

Can mods update the title to the one of the site: "EA removes Battlefront 2 refund option as gamers cancel pre-orders en masse [Update: False alarm]" - Looks like this is actually not a problem. > Update: As pointed out by PCGamesN, it appears the refund button is disabled for all pre-orders on EA’s Origin store – not just for Star Wars: Battlefront 2. > While EA does indeed offer refunds for up to seven days after a pre-ordered game launches, the refund button only appears once the game is out. This means that anybody who wants to cancel their pre-order will have to go through the customer support chat by default. > Or alternatively, wait for the refund button to show up once Battlefront 2 launches officially on November 17.

JamesUtah07 9y ago
I disagree. Disabling all refunds is an obvious obfuscation for disabling BF2 refunds.
- cavanasm 9y ago
  The update is that refunds aren't disabled, the system has always worked in this particular way for pre-orders less than 7 days before launch, and nothing has changed. When the game launches, the refund function is available for 24 hours from first start up.
whamlastxmas 9y ago
Did they change it today so this is how it works? Your quote doesn't really specify and I pretty much expect this sort of sneaky non-full-disclosure behavior from EA.
synicalx 9y ago
I'd heard and seen screenshots on Reddit showing the button being present prior to all this happening, and then disappearing. Is that not the case? EA's statement is not clear, it just says "the refund button only appears once the game is out" but doesn't clarify how long that has been the case. Knowing EA, that probably means "As of two hours ago, the refund button only appears once the game is out."

ralmidani 9y ago

I used to have a video game addiction. I once sat on my knees for 8 hours playing Mega Man 2 (I could barely unfold my legs afterwards). When I got Diablo in 1996, I stayed up for 40 hours playing it, to the point where I started clicking on hallucinatory demons on the screen. I am so happy I stopped playing video games before in-app purchases became a trend. Destroyed productivity was bad, but the stories about people flushing tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars down the drain terrify me. That could have been me.

jknoepfler 9y ago

With respect, I think a lot of people are missing the bigger issue here. Slowly, steadily, and imperfectly, mass culture is starting to demand authenticity from the companies that sell them products. The most downvoted comment on reddit, with something like 650k downvotes, is EA's predictably soulless PR response to the pricing complaints (which is now copy-pasted into every thread about p2win and overpriced microtransactions). This is part of a cultural shift. EA appears to be on the wrong side of it, and the traditional "community engagement" tactics they deployed backfired horrendously. Twenty years ago, you could adequately manage a mass consumer community with ads and some targeted engagement. As people's resistance to transparent inauthenticity grows (and it has been growing steadily for at least fifty years), it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage people one doesn't actually care about. Mass credulity is decreasing (slowly, steadily, imperfectly). As with all cultural shifts, there are contradictions and complexities. Yes, some kids in the "downvote brigade" will buy the game anyway, and there will be whales who spend too much money on the game. The problem for EA is that they won't be as numerous, and as time and culture march on they will eventually all but vanish. I don't think anyone in advertising or PR thinks their job is getting easier. And honestly, it should be difficult to sell people stupid baubles for large amounts of money. I think the rise of mass media exposed some holes in our collective cultural defenses that we've been patching up over two or three generations. This kind of backlash will become increasingly more frequent as large entertainment companies attempt and fail to adapt to the changing times. At the end of the day, some middle-aged cadre of smart, possibly even savvy and well-meaning PR people will try to adapt EA's (or whomever's) community engagement tactics, and they will find a new and creative (even laudable) ways to fail.

mercer 9y ago
I might be too pessimistic, but I'm inclined to believe that PR/marketing will figure out how to be 'authentic' or otherwise solve this problem well enough. There's lots of smart people who get paid to do so, and I think that trumps any disjointed mob behavior. In fact, it's quite possible EA is not at all surprised by this backlash and was simply 'optimizing'. This time they went a bit too far perhaps, so next time they'll be a bit nicer until all this is forgotten. I mean, we're talking about EA here. I don't recall a time where they weren't hated by most of Reddit, and I don't get the impression it's been much of a problem for them.