What happened?
Electronic Arts has recently announced their new game Battlefront II, which included a "loot crate system" that requires real money to purchase. The loot crates grant players the chance of getting popular characters like Darth Vadar without having to spend hours earning points in game. The community was outraged when they found out the difficulty of unlocking in-game characters; some rare characters will take more than 40hours of gameplay, indirectly forcing players to have to spend real money to buy loot crates.
What are the consequences?
When the game developer announced the changes on Reddit (an online forum), the announcement took the website by storm, becoming the most downvoted comment in the history of the site, showing how outraged the gaming community was. The backlash significantly affected EA's stock price; the stock is down 8.5 percent month to date through Tuesday compared with the S&P 500's 2 percent gain, wiping out $3.1 billion in value. Its competitors Take-Two and Activision Blizzard shares are up 5 percent and 0.7 percent respectively during the same time period.
Your reactions?
What do you think about EA's move to generate extra profit by encouraging players to make purchases in-game? Do you see other potential ways for game developers to generate revenue (such as in-game embedded advertisements)?
With E-sports being more and more prominent-having various televised leagues and a loyal fan base, what does the future hold for the video games industry? What do you think game developers like EA can do to get the most out of the E-sports economy?