During the quote-unquote “beta” of Star Wars Battlefront 2 by EA and DICE, a lot of gamers raised concern over the controversial implementation of loot boxes that called for heavy grinding to make progress through its system. Well, as of now, DICE has a response to this very fiasco.

In the day and age where triple-A titles like to abuse the words “Alpha” and “Beta” to show how “early” a title is — despite it being a month out from release — we also have to deal with the act of microtransactions and cut content via DLCs that are no more than a cash grab.

Furthermore, a certain Star Wars Battlefront 2 happens to suffer from the aforesaid and has stirred up a lot of controversy in the process. The response from DICE looking to escape from people canceling pre-orders or skipping out on the game altogether, took to a blog post on ea.com to explain the following:

We know you have a lot of questions about Crates and progression, so we want to clarify a few things, as the complete system was not in the Beta and will continue to be tuned over time:

• There are many things you can earn in the game, including weapons, attachments, credits, Star Cards, Emotes, Outfits and Victory Poses.
• As a balance goal, we’re working towards having the most powerful items in the game only earnable via in-game achievements.
• Crates will include a mix of of Star Cards, Outfits, Emotes or Victory Poses.
• Players earn crates by completing challenges and other gameplay milestones, or by purchasing them with in-game credits or Crystals, our premium currency.
• If you get a duplicate Star Card in a crate, you will get crafting parts which you can then use to help upgrade the Star Card of your choice.
• And lastly, you have to earn the right to be able to upgrade Star Cards and unlock most Weapons. You can only upgrade or unlock them if you have reached a high enough rank, which is determined by playing the game.

To sum up the above, DICE is shipping a $59.99 game that will be tuned over time — even though it’s a sequel to the 2015 outing —  but they managed to add in a feature in the game that’s a month out from release (although it’s still currently in “beta”), and they claim that it’s not complete? Give me a break.

You want to know the truth behind all of this? It was to test and see how gamers would react to this mess and if they would accept it or not. Think about it, why add the feature in the “beta” if you can’t put cash down for the content at the moment since it was aimed to speed up progress?

Furthermore, like in most EA and DICE games, your profile from a beta to the full game carries over, meaning that if you have the best of the best gear you will always have an advantage in the full version. This means that newcomers will never have the advantage that lucky beta members have, which will force them to pay for better stuff. And if your equipment does not carry over, why add it in the beta if better gear locked behind loot boxes has already been established as being unfair?

I know that you are probably sick of loot boxes just as I am, but this seriously needs to be addressed. However, I keep seeing people say “well, just don’t buy the loot boxes.” The problem with that mindset is even if you don’t play for the multiplayer and play only for the single player mode, you are inadvertently promoting microtransactions in that game thus increasing the likelihood of its appearance in the next title.

It’s sad that an indie title like Studio MDHR’s Cuphead — which is a game built from the ground up with no prior title before it — has been out close to three weeks and has not one patch out and works just fine, but a triple-A title built on the established base of a game that came out back in 2015 needs constant updates even after a beta, what a shame.