EA finance chief Blake Jorgensen has revealed to the Wall Street Journal that Star Wars: Battlefront II will be reinstalling microtransactions within “the next few months”. This is consistent with previous comments from Dice General Manager Oskar Gabrielson, who said “the ability to purchase crystals in-game will become available at a later date, only after we’ve made changes”.
In other words, crystals could be back without the pay to win element. EA originally suspended the game’s microtransaction feature after backlash from players and politicians alike, drawing ire due to its unbalanced progression system and alleged parallels with gambling.
The hostile reception surrounding Star Wars: Battlefront II‘s launch saw EA stock prices fall, and supposedly deny it from reaching its sales target of 8 million units. There’s a possibility sales could have plunged further had EA chosen not to deactivate microtransactions when it did, but the confirmation of their return seems to be doing exactly the opposite to company stock prices, which closed at $126.96 — the highest in 16 years — in today’s trading session.
Andrew Wilson, EA’s CEO said the company “never intended to build an experience that could be seen as unfair” and appeared grateful for player feedback irrespective of its nature, praise or critique. It will be interesting to see how the redesigned microtransaction formula functions when EA eventually rolls it out. At the time of publication, a release date has not yet been specified.
