So, you're tweeting a jpeg of an apology...

... here's how not to do it.

[Sigh.]

OK, first things first. 

More Steam Deck hype

One of the few obvious weaknesses of Valve's Steam Deck was support for Easy Anti-Cheat titles. Epic, who make EAC, had already announced that Fortnite will not support SteamOS, apparently just to hurt Valve; Bungie, who make Destiny 2, have also refused to support the Steam Deck, although whether they're taking that stance to ingratiate themselves with Sony (who are in the process of acquiring them), or just to be dicks, is not known.

Thankfully, though, not every developer of an EAC-laden title is so short-sighted. As reported by Jason Evangelho at Forbes:

Bungie isn’t playing nice with Valve’s Steam Deck, but EA and Respawn Entertainment certainly are. Today’s absolutely thrilling news is that popular hero shooter Apex Legends has earned a “Steam Deck Verified” checkmark, meaning that the game legally and officially supports an implementation of Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) on Linux. So whether you’re playing on Valve’s handheld or on desktop Linux, Apex Legends is ready for you.

[...]

That’s two massive games getting official Linux support in the last week, the other being Elden Ring, which currently runs more smoothly on Linux than on Windows thanks to Valve’s custom patches.

This is great news for Valve's newly-released handheld PC, because EAC really is the Achilles' heel of the thing. A quick look at ProtonDB's EAC page shows both the problem, and the progress that Valve is making here, but the more momentum that Valve can achieve by convincing developers of EAC titles to support Steam Deck, the better.  

In other news, overall progress "Deck Verifying" games is also brisk:

Two weeks after its official launch, Steam Deck has achieved another milestone with more than 1,200 games certified by Valve as “Playable,” with 10s of 1000s more waiting to be tested.

[...]

It’s remarkable how much progress Linux gaming has made in the past few years. Hopefully holdouts like Fortnight and Destiny 2 will see the light in the near future.

Man, Q2 2022 can't come soon enough...

EA course-corrects, will allow new Dragon Age sequel to be a solo RPG... just like all the other Dragon Age games

You know that the bar is really fucking low when this counts as a good thing.

As reported by Jason Schreier at Bloomberg:

Video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. has made a major pivot on the next game in the popular Dragon Age series, allowing the developers to remove all planned multiplayer components from the game, according to people familiar with the matter.

Dragon Age is a series of fantasy games from the EA-owned developer BioWare. The next Dragon Age, which doesn’t yet have an official title or release date, had previously been designed with a heavy multiplayer component, said the people, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the press. In recent months, it has transformed into a single-player-only game after EA was stung by a recent multiplayer flop.

That "recent multiplayer flop" was, of course, Anthem, further development on which was stopped by EA earlier this week. Up until that point, EA had been all in on loot-box-laden "live service" games, with their corporate strategy depending heavily on developing and publishing only "live service" multiplayer games going forward, but after lukewarm reception for Star Wars Battlefront, the PR disaster that was SW:BF2's planned loot box system, and the utter embarrassment that was Anthem's release, it would seem that they're rethinking that strategy.

And, yes, this is a good thing. Here's hoping that other AAA developers follow suit, giving up on forcing free-to-play monetization into full-price games, and return to just making good, feature-complete, finished games again.

A busy week for corporate bullshit

After months of keeping low profiles while COVID-19 dominated the headlines, the tech industry has apparently decided to make up for lost time with a one-week barrage of bullshit to close out October. Because who doesn't want to slide into the busiest sales season of the year on a slick of one's own mess, and associated consumer ill will? What do you mean, "Nobody with any sense?"

Anyway, here's a roundup of my favourites from yesterday, complete with pithy snarky commentary.

Disney's different take on EA's lack of Star Wars games

After days of sustained criticism from numerous quarters over EA's handling of the Star Wars license, IP owner Disney has finally weighed in... and their take on the situation was surprising, to say the least. As reported by WIRED:

One of the most uneasy partnerships in games is the one between publisher EA and Disney. For several years now, since the shuttering of LucasArts games, EA has had an exclusive deal with Disney to make Star Wars console titles. That's all well and good—except for the fact that none of those games have been unmitigated successes and there haven't exactly been a lot of them, either. As a result, many have speculated that Disney's deal with EA might not be long for this world—but apparently the Mouse House is fine with things as they are.

In a recent earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger replied to questions about the company's relationship with EA by saying that the deal works well for both parties. "We've had good relationships with some of those we're licensing to, notably EA and the relationship on the Star Wars properties, and we're probably going to stay on that side of the business and put our capital elsewhere," Iger said. "We're good at making movies and television shows and theme parks and cruise ships and the like, we've just never managed to demonstrate much skill on the publishing side of games." Welp, at least Disney is happy. Because, uh, no one else is.

Now, I'll admit that I was as surprised as anybody, at first. Even if Disney didn't have a great video game track record, LucasArts did, at least up to the point when Disney acquired and then gutted their operation. Surely, given how aggressively Disney planned to push the boundaries of the Star Wars franchise, it would have made more sense to keep that team in place, along with their solid track record of doing exactly what Disney needed, rather than reducing them to a skeleton crew that would struggle to oversee anything much... and then outsourcing all responsibility for this huge part of the Star Wars portfolio.

After taking a few days to think about it, though, I've come around to Iger's way of thinking, and not only because Disney doesn't have a great track record when it comes to video games. EA's problems putting out decent Star Wars games are only one symptom of Disney's larger problem: that their entire strategy for Star Wars has been wrong-headed, basically from the very start.

First, the planned pace of Disney's Star Wars releases appears to have been simply too aggressive. True, the flopping of Solo: A Star Wars Story could easily be partly attributed to the boycott espoused by the Star Wars fandom's most toxic and misogynistic elements, but I don't believe that Star Wars fandom as a whole is that virulently toxic or blindly bigoted. After three lacklustre prequels, two more main story films (both of which received decidedly mixed responses from fans), and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a lot of Star Wars fans were simply suffering from Star Wars fatigue.

EA: The fun is about to end

It the process of writing my post about the Epic Games/Metro:Exodus mess, I came across this SeekingAlpha article on what the future holds for EA Games, and OMG is it ever a must-read.

EA needs to change its business model fundamentally. Its current model alienates players and makes EA more susceptible to competition. A significant source of profits, lootboxes, are being regulated away. Players are moving to mobile and free to play, where EA is weaker than its competitor Activision Blizzard. We believe that EA is currently heading towards another inflection point where players will start leaving en masse. EA could've already crossed the inflection point. Either way, things aren't looking good.

EA has a very tiny pipeline ahead, with Anthem and Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall 3 and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order being the only major non sports games EA is planning to launch. This is after releasing a bunch of old games that are not selling well. This is the perfect recipe for a massive revenue shortfall in 2019. This situation isn't helped by EA's terrible reputation, the upcoming lootbox bans, or increasing competition from developers around the world.

Although downside is reduced by the low valuation, we believe this valuation will look high when considering the secular decline in EA's revenues and profits. We believe EA will make a good short candidate if the market continues running up and brings EA up with it.

"Good short candidate" refers to the investment strategy of short-selling, essentially selling stock that you've only borrowed for just that purpose. It's basically a bet that the stock's value is about to drop; if it does, they you pocket the difference between what the stock was worth when you sold it, and what it was worth when you had to buy it back to "return" the shares that you'd "borrowed."

The quoted passage, BTW, is the conclusion from fifteen pages of analysis, all of which are worth reading if you're at all interested in the video game business. Seriously, go read the whole thing, because it's fascinating in a way that stock analysis normally isn't.

The various section titles in the article should give you some idea what to expect, though:

• Lootboxes: Regulation is coming
• Destroying franchises
• FIFA - How long can it last?
• Star Wars: An unmitigated disaster
• Battlefield V: Soldier up, EA!
• Competition: A quickly narrowing moat
• Dubious tactics: Denying valid refunds
• Significant insider selling
• Anthem: Not looking good

The "Star Wars" section features one of the most glorious EA Star Wars memes I've ever seen, too:

EA's Star Wars games in a nutshell.

Did I mention that this article was a great read? Seriously, go read the whole thing right now.

Epic Games' big gamble

Having mentioned Epic Games' storefront in passing in my last post, I suppose it would behoove me to elaborate a bit on my thoughts on the issue. Because I'm firmly of the opinion that Epic Games will not become any more a competitor to Steam than any of the other already-existing online storefronts: Origin, Uplay, GOG, Itch.io, etc., for several reasons.

The opposite of hype is not necessarily truth

This probably sounds really weird coming from someone like me, who loudly proclaims his opposition to the cynical workings of the average corporate PR hype machine, but there's a time and a place to stop pissing on companies that are doing nothing wrong.

It seems to be fashionable lately to hate on Valve, who run the wildly successful Steam platform, and I really don't understand some of the pure manure that's passing as for journalism these days where Steam is concerned. Case in point, this piece from Kotaku about the release of Negligee: Love Stories:

Slowly but surely, Valve seems to be letting uncensored adult games onto Steam at last, starting with Negligee, which came out today. The catch is that it’s only available in some regions, and it remains banned in a globe-spanning majority of others. In a thread on Steam, developer Dharker responded to prospective players’ confusion by explaining where and why Negligee remains unavailable.

Because open marketplaces are apparently a bad thing now. Because reasons.

E3's winners and losers

So, it's that time again... when everybody looks back, and tries to decide who "won" E3 2018. I thought Microsoft had the best press conference, but that Sony would probably be declared the winner by most commentators, but how do those predictions stack up to reality?

ScreenRant named XBox, Sony, Bethesda, and Ubisoft as their winners, while declaring Nintendo, Square Enix, and EA to be the letdowns of E3 2018. [Oh, shit, Ubisoft! I forgot all about Ubisoft!]

USGamer declared Microsoft to be the winner, and Square Enix to be the loser, with a few other "witty" additions:

• Losers: The crowd during Bethesda's Rage 2 Andrew W.K. performance; Walmart Canada; People who aren't emotionally invested in Super Smash Bros.; [their] health.
• Winners: Todd Howard; The people who have been yelling for a Metal Wolf Chaos release in the west their entire lives; Masahiro Sakurai basically saying fuck it and making Smash Bros. game people can't complain about; being hella gay.

[Dammit, why does everyone have to be a fucking comedian all the fucking time?]

Tom's Guide ranked their list:

1. XBox (grade: A)
2. PlayStation (grade: A-)
3. Bethesda (grade: B+)
4. Nintendo (grade: B)
5. Ubisoft (grade: B)
6. EA (grade: C)
7. Square Enix (grade: C-)

[Looks like someone's grading on a curve, but whatevs.]

It's early days yet, but so far, it looks like my take on things was pretty darn good. I do feel a bit bad for overlooking Ubisoft, though, so let's address that injustice.

Hype and hypocricy: Reactions to Bethesda at E3

So, apparently I'm covering E3 this year. I'm as surprised as you are.

Bethesda's E3 conference followed Microsoft's on Sunday, and just as I predicted, Microsoft's blow-out of a show proved to be a tough act to follow. Apparently Bethesda's presentation this year was an improvement over last year's, but they are only one studio; Microsoft, by comparison, as the platform holder, owns multiple first-party studios of their own, and multiple third-party developers whose games they could also add to their hype event. Realistically, Microsoft should be able to put on a more impressive press conference; it wouldn't be reasonable to demand that Bethesda equal Microsoft's presentation.

That said, though, it's equally unreasonable to assert that Bethesda somehow surpassed Microsoft to put on the "best conference of E3 so far," just because they teased something that you were hoping they teased, on their way to talking about the ten or so projects that they felt like showing off this year. Of those, only Elder Scrolls Legends, Elder Scrolls Blades, Fallout 76, and Prey: Mooncrash will be releasing this year. Rage 2, Wolfenstein: Young Blood, and DOOM: Eternal are due sometime next year, while Starfield and Elder Scrolls IV are essentially nothing but logos at this point.

Oh, and VR. Bethesda are still all-in on VR, with Prey being added to their VR lineup, and a Wolfenstein VR hacking/puzzle game coming... sometime.

Hype machine breakdown: EA flops at E3

E3 is the single biggest event on the video games industry calendar. This is video gaming's Super Bowl. This is the one time of the year when everybody who gives a shit about video games is paying attention, willingly suspending their disbelief, literally begging to be hyped. If you've got a public relations A game, this is the time to bring it.

EA... did not bring it.

• Yes, Sea of Solitude looks pretty cool, although it would have been better to be shown the game, rather than have an indie studio head with no PR-fu just stand there talking about it. 
• Long-time fans of Command and Conquer were not hyped to see the storied franchise turned into a mediocre mobile game. 
• Presentations for the oligatory FIFA and Madden offerings ran way too long, and showed nothing that fans of those games haven't seen before.
• Speaking of obligatory, the latest Battlefield game will have a Battle Royale mode. Because of course it will. Because EA's execs have no imagination whatsoever. Never mind that BFV's devs were saying just a month ago that their game wasn't going to add a BR mode just to add it, but whatevs.
• People who were hoping for more information about the upcoming Anthem were disappointed. It still looks like Destiny, though.

Worst of all, though, at least to me, was EA's ongoing failure with the Star Wars franchise.

The loot box fallout keeps on falling, hitting everyone... except EA.

Just days after the Netherlands called on other EU nations to join with them in regulating gacha mechanics in videogames, Belgium has stepped up to do just that. And how. From Kotaku:

Loot boxes in FIFA 18, Overwatch, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are now illegal in Belgium, with the country’s legislators declaring today that if the games’ publishers don’t remove the offending microtransactions, people behind the games could face fines and even time behind bars.

As reported by Eurogamer, Belgium minister of justice Koen Greens said in a statement that the loot boxes in these games were in violation of the country’s gaming legislation and thus the companies selling them are subject to criminal punishment, including fines of up to 800,000 euros ($974,605) and prison sentences. This determination was made after Belgium’s Gaming Commission spent several months reviewing how loot boxes operated in these games and others following the controversy surrounding Star Wars: Battlefront 2’s microtransactions.

[...]

Neither Overwatch publisher Blizzard nor CS:GO publisher Valve immediately responded to requests for comment.

Ironically, EA and SW:BF2 will avoid Belgian censure, "since at the time of the survey, EA had temporarily removed microtransactions from the game." MTs have since been added back into SW:BF2, but they're not tied to gambling mechanics anymore, and therefore don't break Belgian law. Which means that EA, having thoroughly shit the loot box bed, have completely ruined the fun for everybody else while dodging the fines and other penalties. Huzzah!

Still, if you were wondering if the loot box furor had died down... it hasn't. At all. And I have a feeling that it will be a long, long time before AAA videogame publishers attempt this particular trick again.

The "loot box" fallout hasn't stopped falling

Q: How badly did EA miss the mark with Star Wars: Battlefront 2's loot box-driven progression mechanics?

A: Badly enough that the Netherlands is not only banning loot boxes, but urging other EU nations to do the same... after EA decoupled SW:BF2's progression system from its monetization system.

From GamesIndustry.biz:

The Netherlands Gaming Authority (NGA) says it wants to "work together and act together" with other European nations to tackle the issue of loot boxes.

Following on from yesterday's ruling that certain iterations of the mechanic contravene national gambling legislation, the government body has begun trying to work with other EU member states on the matter.

"There is no question of harmonisation of regulations," the NGA told GamesIndustry.biz. "Every European regulator has its own laws and regulations. We now want to work together and act together."

Yes, "gacha" mechanic regulations aren't just coming, they're here, and they're spreading. And while EA isn't the only "loot box" offender, their pairing of gacha mechanics with the Star Wars license, just weeks before The Last Jedi hit theatres, managed to garner a degree and intensity of negative PR that practically begged to be restricted. Good job, EA. GG.

Oh, and that ruling that's referred to? Not only did it find four games as being "in direct contravention of the Betting and Gaming Act" (FIFA 18, Dota 2, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and Rocket League are supposedly the games in question), it also defined what sort of loot box mechanics violate the law:

The violation is defined by loot box mechanics that require no skill element whatsoever, and contain exchangeable items that hold market value outside the game.

If the developers don't take action to change these mechanics by June 20, they could be fined or even face the prohibition of their game within the region.

I hated to see loot boxes proliferating in AAA videogames, mainly because (as you know) I hate to see bad corporate behaviour rewarded with boatloads of cash... and "gacha" games do rake in metric tonnes of the stuff. So it's good to see bad loot box behaviour finally being penalized, instead. It remains to be seen if the AAA video game industry will actually learn a fucking lesson from all this, of course, but one can always hope.

Belgium rules loot boxes are gambling, and will seek to make them illegal. Hawaii may follow suit.

This story is, obviously, blowing up right now, but it looks like PC Gamer gets first post:

Last week, Belgium's Gaming Commission announced that it had launched an investigation into whether the loot boxes available for purchase in games like Overwatch and Star Wars Battlefront 2 constitute a form of gambling. Today, VTM News reported that the ruling is in, and the answer is yes.

The Google translation is a little sloppy, as usual, but the message is clear enough. "The mixing of money and addiction is gambling," the Gaming Commission declared. Belgium's Minister of Justice Koen Geens also weighed in, saying, "Mixing gambling and gaming, especially at a young age, is dangerous for the mental health of the child."

Geens, according to the report, wants to ban in-game purchases outright (correction: if you don't know exactly what you're purchasing), and not just in Belgium: He said the process will take time, "because we have to go to Europe. We will certainly try to ban it.

GamingBolt has another great post on this development:

Folks, we won. After Belgium confirmed last week that it would be investigating charges of unregulated gambling in popular video games such as Overwatch, thanks to the Star Wars Battlefront 2 controversy, they have come out with their decision- loot boxes are indeed gambling, they say, and they will move to have them banned in the European Union.

This is fantastic news for multiple reasons- if loot boxes are illegal in Europe, then publishers will have two options- either develop two versions of their games (one with loot boxes, one without), or forego a release in Europe (therefore, half the market for most western publishers) entirely. Therefore, unless publishers literally want to spend the money on balancing and QAing two progression paths for their games, they will have no chance but to remove loot boxes from their titles- if this regulation passes.

That, "folks, we won," at the start of GamingBolt's post may turn out to be the most important part of this story. This really is a case of consumers banding together, and staying together, to generate sustained public pressure and bring about change, in a gaming community that has famously been unable to do any of those things until five minutes ago. Gamers have finally realized that they have the power in this relationship, and can force the big AAA publishers to back down on issues that really matter to them, and this is unlikely to be the last time it happens, either.

Report: EA removed MTs from SWBF2 because Disney insisted

When I first heard that EA had announced the temporary removal of gacha monetization from Star Wars Battlefront II, my immediate knee-jerk reaction was, "I'll bet that someone from Disney made a phone call," and I wasn't the only one. EA, after all, was clearly intending to weather the storm and cash in on the game's gacha, but Disney was facing a wave of negative Star Wars-related PR with The Last Jedi's release only a month away; the reversal really only made sense if it happened at Disney's instigation.

Well, it seems that's exactly what happened, according to SegmentNext:

Disney might have saved EA from an even bigger catastrophe before the game released, according to Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz. Apparently, Disney called EA to let them know how displeased they were about the handling of the Battlefront 2 microtransactions.

Battlefront 2 had a rather disastrous launch after it came out that EA was adding in a great deal of grinding to Battlefront 2 in order to unlock well-known heroes like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Fritz apparently wrote an article that talked about how Disney contacted EA to let them know about Disney CEO Bob Igner’s “worry” about their handling of the game.

[...]

This isn’t the only Star Wars game that EA has mucked up recently either, after they canned production of a Star Wars game developed by Visceral Games that was originally going to be single-player and story-driven in favor of a multiplayer-focused game, which sparked its own debate about how relevant single-player games were in this day and age with games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, and more being given as pro-single player examples.

Lucasfilm eventually released a short, boilerplate PR statement confirming that they "support EA’s decision," but the simple reality is that EA probably wouldn't have made this decision if Disney hadn't weighed in. EA may be one of the biggest companies in videogames right now, but they're minnows compared to Disney... and Disney own Star Wars. If EA fuck up badly enough, Disney can just pull the license, and the suddenness of EA's reversal on their Star Wars gacha is suggestive of that being basically what EA were really afraid of here.

Meanwhile, the temporary removal of gacha from SWBF2 seems to have some too late to prevent some sort of regulatory action, with French regulators also investigating whether gacha systems would require regulation or consumer protections. With Belgium also looking into regulating loot boxes, it's looking more and more like EA's unseemly over-reach on the issue may just have precipitated exactly the kind of regulatory response that they were desperate to avoid.

Meanwhile, SWBF2's is garnering pretty poor reviews across the board, with a Metacritic score of only 69, and a user score of only 0.8 (the original SWBF managed a MC score of 75, with an average user score of 3.5, by comparison). And, for a wonder, its sales appear to be following suit, actually reflecting of this poor critical and consumer reception, at least in the UK.


The Know has a decent roundup of the latest developments:

So, have gamers finally had enough of this shit? Are they finally voting with their feet and wallets? Only time will tell, but the fact that it's finally happened, even once, gives me hope for humanity.

Victory! Kinda...

It finally happened: after weeks of controversy, days of full-blown, outrage-driven consumer revolt, and yesterday's news that their bullshit business practices have prompted an investigation (with possible fines and/or straight-up banning of their product) in Belgium, a AAA videogame publisher has actually decided that the lure of filthy lucre just isn't worth it. For now, anyway.

As reported by Kotaku:

EA is temporarily pulling the microtransactions from Star Wars Battlefront II, a shocking move that comes after days of zealous fan anger and just hours before the official launch of the game.

“We hear you loud and clear, so we’re turning off all in-game purchases,” wrote Oskar Gabrielson, GM of Battlefront II developer DICE, in a blog post this evening. “We will now spend more time listening, adjusting, balancing and tuning. This means that the option to purchase crystals in the game is now offline, and all progression will be earned through gameplay. The ability to purchase crystals in-game will become available at a later date, only after we’ve made changes to the game. We’ll share more details as we work through this.”

You're reading that correctly -- they blinked. I guess CNN picking up the story was the final straw.

Even as a long-time Star Wars fan (I saw the original Star Wars in '77, back when it was still just called Star Wars, and long before Lucas' revisionist digital fuckery or those god-awful prequels), I was not interested in this game. I didn't play Star Wars Battlefront, because (a) I'm not a big FPS fan to start with, (b) I don't much care for MMOs, either, and (c) its total lack of a single-player story/campaign mode wasn't appealing at all, so the idea of buying a sequel to a game that I didn't care about wasn't something that I was ever going to consider. My objection to SWBF2's gacha wasn't motivated by any concern over how my personal experience with the game might be affected; I just hated the corporate greed and total bullshit on display on principle.

Time will tell if EA's disastrous foray into making a mediocre full-priced game much worse by adding free-to-play monetization will have any effect on the broader videogame industry; with regulators now awake to just how shitty this stuff can become, and already investigating the game that started it all, Activision Blizzard's Overwatch, we could have already passed a tipping point in which the AAA videogame industry actually backs away from an egregious bullshit practice due to its long-term costs, regardless of its short-term lucrativeness. Which is a rare occurrence in any industry, not just in videogames.

So I say, Huzzah! Let us celebrate our temporary, partial victory over the forces of the most banal of greedy and evil corporate practice. The fact that gamers have finally rallied to prove that there is a point when enough is e-fucking-nuff, even in videogames, is a good thing.

Well, that escalated quickly...

After making headlines on gaming blogs, web sites, and YouTube channels for the last few months, it seems that the growing backlash over video game "gacha" (a.k.a. "loot boxes") has attracted the regulatory attention that it richly deserves, as reported by Kotaku:

Belgian website VTM is reporting that the country’s Gaming Commission is currently taking a look at loot boxes in video games, with particular focus on EA’s inclusion of them in Star Wars: Battlefront II and Blizzard’s use in Overwatch.

Peter Naessens, General Director of the commission, says that the practice of buying the add-on boxes—where you don’t know what you’re paying for until you open it—may constitute gambling.

It’s a particular concern for the Commission when the game is available for and marketed towards children, like Overwatch and Battlefront II are (in Europe both titles have a PEGI rating of 12).

This isn't the first regulatory or legislative attention the loot boxes have received, but it is the first time I've seen that any country is looking to regulate gacha in much the same way that they regulate casinos. And with videogame consumers' reactions to gacha becoming increasingly negative and increasingly intense, it's starting to look as it AAA game publishers' "gold rush" mentality towards free-to-play gacha systems in full-priced videogame releases may be as short-lived as it was short-sighted... however lucrative it may have been in the near term.

The biggest lightning rod for criticism and discontent? EA, of course, as reported by Mirror.co.uk:

The latest Star Wars video game is set to launch tomorrow but fans are outraged over the decision to put a controversial "Credits" system into the sci-fi shooter.

[...]

Ahead of the games release, members of the development team at DICE took to Reddit for an "ask me anything" (AMA) segment that quickly turned sour.

Although the discussion was civil, the developers were unable to stray much from the party line. Of the hundreds of questions posed, only 30 were answered and the topic of pay-to-win in a competitive multiplayer title were skillfully evaded.

[...]

One of the highest-rated questions in the AMA, from user Jimquisition, went unanswered:

"Do you not feel loot box design is inherently predatory by nature? They exploit addiction and encourage at least the simulated feel of gambling, despite the lack of legal definition. Is this not a concern for the industry going forward?

"What exactly prompted you to take Battlefront II on a path that was inevitably going to be slammed as a “pay to win” experience, did you not feel it was particularly insulting to try and make so much money from this game after the first Battlefront was admittedly rushed and incomplete?

"They say games are too expensive to make and that’s why they need season passes, DLC, deluxe editions, microtransactions, and loot boxes (to say nothing of merchandise, tax breaks, and sponsorship deals). Can you honestly tell me that a Star Wars game was too expensive to make? That you couldn’t have made a Star Wars game, as in a game about Star Wars, and that it would not conceivably sell enough to make its money back without all these additional monetization strategies? Should you be in this business if you cannot affordably conduct business?" 

Thank God for Jim Fucking Sterling Son. Also, I'll just add that the whole point of a Reddit Ask Me Anything is that Redditors get to ask you anything... and get answers. If you're going to duck and ignore questions, then there's no point to adopting the AMA format, is there?

But I digress. The point is that this sort of shit is... well, shit, and potentially very harmful to anyone with poor impulse control skills, including the children at whom the gacha-laden games are obviously aimed. And people outside of videogame fandom and punditry really are taking notice.