
EA removes Battlefront 2 refund option as gamers mass-cancel pre-orders - artsandsci
https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2017/11/14/ea-battlefront-2-refund-remove/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+All+Stories%29
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bluetidepro
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
I disagree. Disabling all refunds is an obvious obfuscation for disabling BF2
refunds.

~~~
cavanasm
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.

------
jknoepfler
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
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.

------
trose
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
And a single whale can make up for literally hundreds of lost sales through
micro-transactions.

~~~
spystath
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-s...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/california-man-
spent-1-million-playing-game-of-war/)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165780)

~~~
hanbura
>into what is essentially gambling

I think at this point it's important to differentiate: Loot-Crate systems with
resellable content (CS:Go etc) are gambling. Loot-Crate systems without
resellable content function by the same mechanism but are different legally.

On the other hand pay-to-win or pay-to-skip are very different from gambling
and work by completely different mechanisms. Being ahead of everyone else
allows whales to either feel superior or to help fellow players, making the
whales feel useful and depended upon. All of these feelings can be hard to get
in the offline world, so instead whales pay to get them online.

I'm not condoning predatory microtransaction systems at all, but I think it's
important to differentiate them instead of treating them all as if they were
gambling

~~~
EpicEng
I think it's also important to note that this is not a scenario which was
imagined when those rules were put into place and that gacha systems exploit
the same psychological responses in order to get you to spend more.

------
abrongersma
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.

~~~
mrguyorama
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
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
A character that previous games let you play from the get-go and for free.

------
swarnie_
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
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).

------
ralmidani
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.

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

~~~
rf15
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
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.

~~~
tantivy
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
> 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.

