Petition to revoke Star Wars license from EA quickly gains over 40k signatures

Following Star Wars IP owner Disney’s upset at the reception to Star Wars Battlefront 2’s loot box & microtransaction heavy based gameplay, 47,000 fans (at the time of writing) have signed a petition asking for the revoke of publisher EA’s Star Wars License.

The Change.org petition started by John Hunt, is very vocal in its disappointment in the games so far created by EA for the Star Wars brand and their closing of game studio Visceral Games (most known for their Dead Space franchise). Prior to Visceral’s closure they were working on a single player Star Wars game that was canceled along the studio (some EA staff reporting that it wasn’t what the fans wanted but that is mostly being noted as unlikely, due to the hype).

“In 2016 we found out Visceral Games were working on a linear single player Star Wars game, this had a lot of people excited. At E3 2017 we got our first look at this game and again, people were excited. In October 2017 we found out that EA had cancelled this game and that Visceral Games were shutting down. EA told us that the reason the game was cancelled was because ‘people didn’t want a linear single player experience set in the Star Wars universe, they wanted something else that would allow the player to come back regulalary’ – which is just nonsense. Pretty much the whole fanbase were excited for a new single player Star Wars story, however it became quite obvious very quickly why this game was cancelled. They would’ve struggled at monetizing a single player game, they’ve tried before and it didn’t work because consumers are sick of getting ripped off and having to buy more content after spending $60 on a game. EA seem to think if they make something on a broader scale that has an online component then people will buy in-game content to stay relevant in the game, which again is so morally wrong and just shows how out of touch EA are with it’s consumers. Then again, they don’t care about their consumers, they only care about the money they can make from them. Yet again another event that will do more harm to the Star Wars brand than good.”

“And finally this brings me to Star Wars Battlefront 2 which releases tomorrow however some people have had early access since last week. To sum up the game in general, it’s bad – actually no wait that’s too generous – it’s awful. EA has yet again pulled another anti-consumer move and shoved in infamous and unwanted loot boxes into the game, something nobody asked for. These loot boxes were very controversial during the Star Wars Battlefront 2 beta when people noticed that these loot boxes were giving people a huge advantage over other players who didn’t purchase them, and since they could be paid for with real money (in the full game not the beta) it essentially made the game pay-to-win which is unacceptable in any video game regardless of the price or content, yet EA had the cheek to do this in a $60 video game. This causes a major backlash online which had such a strong effect that EA even had to comment on the matter saying they would ‘rework and revise the system’, and now we know that statement was a complete and utter lie.”

–John Hunt

At the moment the future of Star Wars games is left in the air with the reaction to Battlefront 2 gaining more public attention, something Disney likely doesn’t want ahead of its Last Jedi release this December.

You can sign the petition here.

(source – SidAlpha)