Electronic Arts has been in the centre of criticism for a while. After closing down Visceral Games, the publisher claimed that its new Star Wars game was not an experience that players would want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come. As such, the publisher decided to completely cancel that version and start from the beginning. And during the UBS Global Technology Conference 2017, Electronic Arts chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen revealed what most of us already suspected from that cancellation; that EA will now invest on live services.
According to Jorgensen, Electronic Arts is trying to build a live service that will constantly add content to the game, giving people new ways to play. This live service will be all about constantly watching, listening to, and reacting to the community to try to develop great gameplay. Or at least that’s what Jorgensen claims.
Jorgensen believes that the gaming industry is moving towards a ‘play the service‘ instead of a ‘play the game‘ model. And EA will definitely be a part of it. After all, this is evident from the cancellation of Visceral’s Star Wars game. EA believed that there weren’t many ways via which players could ‘play the experience‘. And that’s the reason why the game got cancelled.
Now the problem with this model is that it’s an excuse for microtransactions. Because I still remember those days when we had level editors and proper modding tools to further extend a game’s ‘experience.’ Doom is a prime example of this as we are still getting numerous mods for it. Hell, even DICE started as a modding team for Battlefield 2 the Battlefield series wouldn’t be what it is today if it wasn’t for the Desert Combat mod for BF1942 (which was used as a baseline for Battlefield 2).
And if you still don’t believe that this model is an excuse for injecting microtransactions to games, here is what Jorgensen said about the live service on existing games.
“If Battlefield 4 had a live service on it, they (EA) could keep people engaged, give them even more to play with, and they’d also most likely be able to monetize them over time.”
So there you have it. Even though EA claims that the live service will benefit players, we all know that they are simply trying to inject microtransactions to their triple-A games. And this does not surprise us at all. Take Two, another big publisher, stated that all of its future games will feature microtransactions. However, it’s completely different stating the obvious, and lying about doing such a thing so you can provide a better experience for the players.
While it’s not clear yet whether EA will inject live services on existing games, it will certainly try to. Whether it succeeds in such a thing remains to be seen!
Thanks Dualshockers
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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F*ck EA . Hard . Deap .
Better not, they can infect you with some venereal disease
in the process. Better just avoid it.
First they spread cancer, now they will spread, AIDS, Cholera, TB, Polio, Ebola as well.
Golden poo for the third time. I call it now!
EA…….EA, just tell the truth. At least have that much respect for our intelligence.
“This live service will be all about constantly watching, listening to, and reacting to the community to try to develop great gameplay.”
Translated: We are going to be trying to pull some sh*t and will be watching to see what the players let us get away with for our future games.
As for Battlefront 2:
I heard that unlocking heroes is kinda fast now.
Also, why people don’t whine about Rainbow Six: Siege, whose business model is arguably worse?
Because EA is evil and we most fight it with the might of our keyboards!
R6S what is wrong with it ?
As for now, there are 13 operators which cost 25,000 renown. And Ubisoft is aiming for at least 80 operators with this price in total! So I feel it’s the same “grind or buy” situation as in SWBF2.
it’s true you have to play to unlock them but many many players have over 100k renown. It’s going fast if you play but yea there’s a grind i see your point.
they cut prices by 75% but also cut the amount of credits you earn by 75% as well so nothing changed at all
Same old same old.
yea same old EA scumbags
They only cut the amount of credits you earn for finishing the campaign. That number is identical to Iden Versio’s price (which went down).
It’s still pay to win.
Campaign reward was reduced to 5000 credits instead of 20000, also you can’t farm credits in arcade mode since game lock earing credits after certain period and you need to wait(like in p2w mobile game) to earn it again.
Cards have tiers, and their rarity is conditioned by amount of cards you have. So at beggining you will only get lower tiers so again, you need to farm a lot.
Whole mulitplayer progression system is build around forcing players to spend real money to get real advantage and progress much faster.
Yeah, but which is the lesser of two evils? Having to pay for 4 add-ons or being able to unlock the whole content without spending anything? Decide for yourself. I, for one, like the idea of a player base which isn’t split across numerous add-ons and the possibility of unlocking the entirety of content for free.
Maybe the old hero prices were ludicrous, but now they are 4 times lower, which seems fair enough.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/55c547ab6f631272749d1c1167556426481c4f253904baaa4dd53729bf6f83b7.jpg
” you can’t farm credits in arcade mode ”
Man times like this i wonder if we pay to play games or we pay to work so we can play games. Why does every game has to be turned into a grindfest?
It takes 4,528 hours of gameplay (or $2100) to unlock all base-game content in a game that already costs 60 to 80 dollars.
That’s not anywhere near reasonable.
Could you show me the calculation?
Posting again because my comment got caught in the url filter and nobody’s approving it after an hour.
archive dot is / J1StV
Wow, that’s horrible if true. I heard it’s based on wrong assumptions, though.
They include upgrading all multiplayer aspects to max as part of “unlocking all base game content.” Using that logic, most multiplayer FPS games would require a ridiculous amount of time to “unlock all base game content.” I’m not defending EA’s horrible business model but this claim is just crazy bait.
The game also has waiting periods for earning credits and daily credit caps, they didn’t even count that in the study, so it’s actually worse.
No matter how you try to spin it, Battlefront 2 microstransactions are irredeemable garbage.
I’m not trying to spin anything. That claim is objectively ridiculous. It’s like complaining that you actually have to play the game to unlock perks in COD or BF. Again, I’m not saying that the micro transactions are good. IMO offline credit cooldowns make sense – you shouldn’t be able to gain advantages in multiplayer by farming credits in single player. I can’t think of one major fps where you can advance in multiplayer by just playing a single player mode. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about that.
I wouldn’t say no to more Battlefield 4 content.
The problem is that none of these “services” will be worth paying for. All the games taking advantage of this nonsense will be brainless arena multiplayer pew-pew that’ll be microtransaction’d to the hilt, with these level/loot schemes that’ll leaves gamers lighter in the wallet and with nothing to show for it. And these dummies will pay for it! lol
The future of gaming is grim and gamers will be the reason.
Ea really wants his throne back. Worse company in the world XD
the worst* 😉
Ty fixed!!!
Publisher interested in ways to make more money, more at 11.
EA is not a developer, their job is not to make games. Their job is to find ways to make as much money as posible from the money the invested in the making of games.
If you are looking for “a dev that cares” EA games is not the place you should be looking for. They offer a product and if you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
I don’t really understand why people waste their time posting in forums like that is going to change what a corporation is…
You just wasted your time posting here, so you don’t understand yourself 🙂 ?
Massive downvotes and backlash on reddit changed nothing…
Ea is a cancer that is spreading. What you said is true but i would love to see more company’s giving the middle finger to ea. Westwood i miss you…
Just speaking for myself, I’m not on a crusade to change EA. I complain because I believe what they are doing is bad for my hobby. I doubt what I say alone is going to affect the outcome in any way whatsoever but maybe if enough people speak out it will cause some gamers who are on the fence about EA to skip buying some of the games that they publish. Maybe not, but to be silent when I believe something is wrong seems cowardly to me. Once again jmo.
So..Gameflix is coming..You will pay every month in order to have access.
If that is the case im done with aaa games. Going back to classics and faq the industry. And i really mean it.
AAA games are basically going this way, more or less with consoles first, but it’s also seeping into PC gaming.
I’ve been more or less buying Indie titles, and a lot less AAA games, basically due to shoddy port jobs and games that generally come out, all cut into pieces, with you having to pay more, sod that model.
Indies and middle market developers are the only hope for single player gaming. I almost entirely avoid “AAA” games these days.
well, ehmmm hmmmm after the attrocity of AAA cinematic idiocy and short campaign the new wolfenstein 2 was, which scratches machine games of the list. I can go ahead and say that the only AAA game i look forward is cyberpunk because its made by cdproject. I dont see anything good on the horizon from the big 3. Activision is cod cod cod, ea is…we aint got sheeeeeeit, so give us your money anyway with microtrsactions, ubisoft is like moar creed moar far cry, also give us your money with microtransactions. I can safely say that AAA is dead, especially in the west. Eeastern europe and japan got something going but other than that. This yer was a microtransaction fest with short sp campaigns.
whhaaaau 😀 thats good 😀
It’s sounds nice and dandy, but if they continue like this, who’s gonna use those services?
well thanks pc gamers again
ea should also start using uwp denuvo vmprotect and always online
pc gamers can get those microtranasctions with trainers as far as sp goes. But i fail to see what is the point on bashing pc gamers when ea and ubisoft are making tremendous amount of money with extreme advertisement, by selling the same godamn game over and over and over again, spending a riddiculus amount of money on graphic and “muh cinematics” and still demand for more money. BUT HEYYYY i guess when uncharted 3 did a adveriing deal with subway sandwhiches that was because of pc gamers too right?
Look, some companies just want to wipe their boogers with your hard earned $$$$, you just dont give em any money. Yet you claim this is somehow pc gamers fault and blame piracy when you have a company who fckd up mass effect, i bet pc gamers were the reason the dlc was canceled and not low sales right troll? Made all their games mp only, and despite the tremendous amount of money they are making, they still added microtransactions, BUT HEY THIS IS PC GAMERS FAULT, somehow managed to get low sales on titanfall 2, you know a MP GAME, with their horrible marketing too close to other games coming out at the time. We talking about the company that has has killed more studios than any other publisher and yet you blame pc gamers for this one and claim that denuvo always online and uwp and vmprotect is gonna somehow improve their sales when all their games are always online micotransaction rehashes.
Congratulations you are now hired by electronic arts because only someone as dumb and out of touch with reallity and dense as you could qualify to be a ea corporate suit.
Squeezing out every single penny.
who is there to blame when gamer themselves throw money to the drain?
I never really bought EA games except for titanfall and a few Need For Speed games.. But I guess that means Titanfall 3 is going to be ruined…
If you’re still buying EA games at this point you kinda deserve to go bankrupt.
I feel like these companies have always hated the default model of gaming since the early days, and that they simply wanted to take full control of it from day 1, this is now the result of that dream.
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“Jorgensen believes that the gaming industry is moving towards a ‘play the service‘ instead of a ‘play the game‘ model”
Of course he would say that, It’s his job.
Problem is what he believes is only from that side of the fence!
Once the sheep wake up and realize they can only afford 1 or 2 games a year instead of a dozen or more, They might change their minds and stop buying this service crap!
There is only so much you can milk something before people move on and want to play something else!
I will probably buy Battlefront II down the line got the original for 5 euros with all the Expansions. got 10 hours of fun from it. In case of Battlefornt II i just want to play SP and i don’t mind playing it 1-2 years in the future got plenty of games to play untill then. Don’t even care for multiplayer because of Pay2win.
Well how i am better than EA then, It’s not like DICE haven’t done any work on the game. 5 euros is like 1 beer/cocktail in bar and if i can get 5-8 hours of entertainment of it. I just pay what i think the game is worth. It’s not like EA is looking oh wait this guy bought our product for 5 euros 2 years later we should totally use this system again.