EA’s Chief Design Officer, Patrick Söderlund, recently made a claim that the company aims to treat their fans right and will no longer feature egregious service mechanics in their future games. EA notes that this is sincere, but some fans feel like this is damage control.
Catching wind from publication site GameRant it is said that EA is trying to ease angered fans to get them onto the hype train for the company’s future installments, such as Battlefield 2018, Anthem and other games that will appear at EA Play this June.
After publishing Mass Effect: Andromeda, cancelling Visceral’s Star Wars project, and devising the whole Star Wars Battlefront 2 loot-box fiasco, it only seemed right that a large amount of gamers and fans would view the company in a bad light.
Well, it looks like EA is sending its executives and chiefs out to address any negative connotations or bad feelings attached to EA, DICE, and BioWare that could negatively impact future titles. Additionally, we now have EA’s Chief Design Officer Patrick Söderlund saying that EA is taking steps to implement and review the microtransaction mechanics before going live with them.
The publication site noted Söderlund saying that the original idea behind Star Wars Battlefront 2 old progression and microtransaction system was “intended for long term players,” while also offering EA “a way to earn a bit of profit on it in order to support free updates.”
Söderlund claims the company “got it wrong,” but he also noted that players “seem to appreciate what the company has done since as players have been coming back and providing stronger engagement numbers.”
Moreover, Söderlund provided the following words in regards to future service mechanics in EA games:
“We have to take action and show people that we’re serious about building the best possible products, that we’re serious about treating the players fair, and we’re here to make the best possible entertainment that we can. And in the cases where we don’t get it right, we just have to listen and learn from it and be better.”
There’s no real proof behind fan talk surrounding EA and DICE having to go back and change Battlefield 2018 service mechanics, same with EA and BioWare doing service changes with Anthem. However, it seems like Söderlund inadvertently confirmed that they are changing them given that they are assessing their steps and reviewing microtransaction mechanics as we speak.
The EA Play event set to go live from June 9th to June 11th will give gamers and fans a clear idea what EA, DICE, and BioWare have in store for gamers when gameplay videos of said games go live.
