EA has managed to avoid review bombs on services like Steam by keeping their games off of Valve’s service. This limits the amount of consumer control that can be exercised toward or against a game published by Electronic Arts. However, gamers have still found a way to make their disgust public, and they’ve done so by review bombing the Metacritic scores for Star Wars: Battlefront II.
If you check the Metacritic page for EA and DICE’s galactic action game, you’ll see that while the common score from reviewers is around 60 – 70 out of 100, consumers, fans, and gamers have used the only voice that they have to reverberate their disdain for the current corporate greed exhibited by publishers like Electronic Arts by giving the game a 0 out of 10.
The PS4 version has a 0.9 rating, with majority of the 6449 user scores giving it a 0 out of 10. Just over 1700 PC gamers gave the game a low enough score so that it averaged out to 0.8 out of 10, and only 789 Xbox One owners offered enough of their anger to average the score out to 0.6 out of 10, which is actually the lowest of the three main platforms.
Twitter user Alejandro Argandona noticed that the game now has a lower user rating than the widely despised game Big Rigs, which is considered one of the worst games ever made.
Big rigs has a better user score than BF2. Understandable though, Big rigs is the best videogame of all time.
Man I’m so glad EA got this greedy. pic.twitter.com/1F8XD5VWjB— Alejandro Argandona (@Toshi_TNE) November 25, 2017
The general sentiment among gamers in the review section is that Star Wars: Battlefront II represents the pinnacle of EA’s corporate greed. The company was forced by Disney to temporarily disable the premium loot boxes in the game, but gamers see right through that and are unwilling to give EA any respite or quarter.
As explained by user named Maltyoman…
“This game is the epitome of years of corporate greed, customer exploitation and worst of all, taking advantage of people’s love for things. Star Wars Battlefront II boils down to a game that looks very nice and is fun to play but overall just hurts you more than makes you happy.
“[…] I honestly can’t believe how bad the practices within this industry have gotten. I want to remind everyone that the best way to combat scum like EA is to vote with your wallets. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.”
Customers are keeping the pressure on, even if the media seems reluctant to take a stance on the issue, despite having no qualms about taking clear and vocal stances on various Social Justice issues.
One upside to the media’s side of things is that according to OpenCritic, there’s actually a far larger number of outlets who gave the game a middling or lower-than-average score compared to the outlets who gave it a positive score. In fact, more than 40 sites gave the game a 65 rating or lower out of 100, which is more than the top two tiers of scores combined.
However, the victory on that front is nearly infinitesimal given how little integrity games media have at this point.
The real change could come from politicians, who have been notified about premium loot boxes in games like Star Wars: Battlefront II, with some promising to enact legislation, while others are looking to put statutory prohibitions in place to prevent games with premium loot boxes from being sold to minors. Gambling commissions are also looking to get the ball rolling on how to deal with the issue as well.
Essentially, Electronic Arts screwed themselves over given that they could have easily sold tens of millions of copies of Star Wars: Battlefront II by just making a bigger and better game than the 2015 outing. Yet instead of settling in on being a thief in the night, intent on taking the funds out of your wallet for Battlefront II, EA also decided they wanted to rape your bank account for some premium loot boxes, too. In result, people were not okay with having a thief and a rapist in their home.
