“You should get full value for the money you spend.”
EA has stated it wants the economy to be “fair” in its games, which is why Loot Boxes have been done away with.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, EA’s chief design officer Patrick Söderlund explained why there the company has changed its thinking on Loot boxes, which means there aren’t any in Anthem or Battlefield V.
“For us, we have come together after the learnings with what happened last year,” Söderlund said. “We’ve put together a framework on how we believe a large service should function, and it’s something we apply across the whole company, across all products. You have to look at it from the perspective of what’s fair. Fair is the number one thing. When you buy a product from us, you should get full value for the money you spend.”
The incident last year, which Söderlund is referring to, is the controversy surrounding Star Wars Battlefront 2 loot boxes. Though EA removed the loot boxes after fan backlash, and insisted loot boxes are not a form of gambling, the randomized rewards were replaced with microtransactions.
“There should be a fair game economy in the game so you can’t pay to win,” Söderlund said. “We don’t want you to be able to pay your way to be better than others. That’s important to us. But we also look at trends in the market and see people are fine with paying for other things, such as how they appear in the game. That seems to be completely fine.”
Earlier this week, the Netherlands began enforcing its loot box ban while, in contrast, Street Fighter 5 added a loot box equivalent.
Vic is a freelance news writer for IGN. Often found force-feeding people The Sims or gifting PlayerUnknown potato bread. You can follow her on Twitter.
