Current Events > "Wall Street is freaking out as EA caves to social media outrage"

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/17/wall-street-is-freaking-out-as-ea-caves-again-to-social -media-outrage-over-its-star-wars-game.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain

Angry gamers are winning the war against Electronic Arts' in-game money-making strategy in its new "Star Wars Battlefront II" title.

Wall Street is taking notice and lowering its expectations for the video game's financial prospects.

The company announced Thursday it is temporarily turning off all in-game purchases in "Star Wars Battlefront II" in response to the negative sentiment from the gaming community.

"It's clear that many of you feel there are still challenges in the design. We've heard the concerns about potentially giving players unfair advantages. Sorry we didn't get this right," EA wrote in the post. "We hear you loud and clear, so we're turning off all in-game purchases. The ability to purchase crystals in-game will become available at a later date, only after we've made changes to the game."

EA's "Star Wars Battlefront II" officially launches on Friday, but portions of the game went live on Nov. 9 for the company's EA Access and Origin Access subscribers.

The company's shares declined 2.5 percent Friday.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch now predicts the "Star Wars" title sales are likely to disappoint investors and come under the company's target because of the gamer outrage.

"The escalation of EA concessions over the past month are a potential negative indicator of pre-order sales trends and overall unit confidence," analyst Justin Post wrote in a note to clients Friday entitled "In-game purchases benched the night before launch."

The "Star Wars Battlefront II" "bumpy launch week creates incremental risk to early unit sales (initial reviews also underwhelming). We think unit sales could come in below EA's earlier FY18 outlook for around 14mn units."

Post maintained his buy rating and $137 price target for Electronic Arts shares, representing 23 percent upside to Thursday's close.

The analyst is hopeful upside from the publisher's sports titles will make up for faltering sales results for "Star Wars Battlefront II."

"We think the strength of Ultimate Team could offset a 2-3 million unit shortfall for Battlefront, and remain comfortable with our FY18 estimates," he wrote.

The initial uproar centered on in-game purchases in "Star Wars Battlefront II." They allowed players to save time by paying extra money to accelerate the "unlock" of major characters like Darth Vader.

The gaming community flooded social media and Reddit with thousands of negative posts, saying the company is unfairly compelling consumers to spend more money for content that should be part of the initial $60 game price.

The company had already partly backtracked as it announced Monday it reduced the credits cost to unlock key characters by 75 percent.

Even before the recent social media fight, other analysts were concerned over "Star Wars Battlefront II" prospects.

Jefferies' analyst Timothy O'Shea questioned whether "Star Wars" game buyers will pay more like consumers of EA's popular sports titles.

"If Star Wars can encourage users to spend real money on virtual goods (like FIFA) the game could drive meaningful upside to F'18 and '19 EPS, but this is not a certainty," O'Shea wrote in a note to clients on Nov. 1 entitled "Star Wars Battlefront 2: A Trick Or a Treat?"

The gaming community is still not satisfied even with EA's latest move to pause in-game purchases, calling out the temporary nature of the action.
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EA's stock is down 7 percent month to date through Thursday compared with the S&P 500's 0.4 percent gain. The gamemaker's shares are still up 42 percent this year.

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So now the people who spent money early get an even bigger advantage
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we did it reddit

Fuck EA and Wall St.
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Oh no, those poor tycoons.
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Purchasing crystals? Did they turn this into a shitty facebook game?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U06jlgpMtQs
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can someone explain what exactly happened with the purchases? like what was wrong with them

Fam_Fam posted...

can someone explain what exactly happened with the purchases? like what was wrong with them

The fact that purchases were for things other than cosmetics.

JustMyOpinion posted...

M_Live posted...

Man, fuck Wall Street anyway.

For what? They predicted investors will see less of a return on the game which is probably true. Seems like you have no basis for your hate other than edgy kids think they're supposed to hate everything Wall Street does.

fuck Wall Street
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Fam_Fam posted...

can someone explain what exactly happened with the purchases? like what was wrong with them

Imagine if you had to pay extra money to unlock Mario in the next Smash Bros game
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Gamers. They targeted gamers.
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I really hope this whole thing doesn't hurt the future of star wars games. I could see some exec seeing this as people don't want star wars games when actually we DESPERATELY want star wars games.
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glitteringfairy posted...

I really hope this whole thing doesn't hurt the future of star wars games. I could see some exec seeing this as people don't want star wars games when actually we DESPERATELY want star wars games.

I think they'll be smart enough to make the distinction
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Doom_Art posted...

glitteringfairy posted...

I really hope this whole thing doesn't hurt the future of star wars games. I could see some exec seeing this as people don't want star wars games when actually we DESPERATELY want star wars games.

I think they'll be smart enough to make the distinction

Disney absolutely wants Star Wars games out there. THEY MAY take away EA's license and give it to someone else.
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fire810 posted...

Disney absolutely wants Star Wars games out there. THEY MAY take away EA's license and give it to someone else.

I don't know that that would be legal, would it?
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Doom_Art posted...

fire810 posted...

Disney absolutely wants Star Wars games out there. THEY MAY take away EA's license and give it to someone else.

I don't know that that would be legal, would it?

who knows, but there's an actual petition for it https://www.change.org/p/the-walt-disney-company-disney-remove-ea-s-star-wars-license
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Doom_Art posted...

I don't know that that would be legal, would it?

It would depend on the terms in the contract. It likely has a clause saying "don't hurt the franchise's reputation ir we'll do X", that Disney might invoke.

we need more star wars games but we don't need more star wars games with this shitty microtransaction model. anything people do to disrupt and make it seem like a bad idea to use that sort of model is a good thing. if we let EA or w*ll str**t think it's a good idea to try and get people to buy into their shit then we're going to be seeing a lot of these models (and worse) in the future

I mean we still might, but it could at least slow down the development or make them seem like a bad idea due to previous failed attempts
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Did he reference Ultimate Team? That's the next scam that needs to be uncovered

Godnorgosh posted...

Imagine if Retro Studios made a Star Wars game

Imagine if Retro Studios made another Republic Commando game
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Fam_Fam posted...

can someone explain what exactly happened with the purchases? like what was wrong with them

They're basically using a mobile game platform on a $60 AAA title.
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Sparksfanboy posted...

EA needs to go. Sure they can maybe get away with one or two really good selling games, but in the long term their trust with fans erodes fast and if Disney wants to turn the Star Wars franchise into a yearly series, and they want a video game series to launch alongside it, EA is absolutely going to be the worst choice for it machamp.

Was reading an article earlier today on how they did basically the same thing with Harry Potter

Just kinda sat on the license for years and really half assed any games
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If EA doesn't listen to their core, gamers, then their whole business will collapse. Wall Street is dumb, fuck em

Doom_Art posted...

Was reading an article earlier today on how they did basically the same thing with Harry Potter

Just kinda sat on the license for years and really half assed any games

That's basically what they do every single year with Madden and it still sells like hotcakes. Fuck EA
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Tony_Biggie_Pun posted...

If EA doesn't listen to their core, gamers, then their whole business will collapse

I think there's really a bunch of problems in the industry that are gonna start blowing up in the next decade or so.

This whole thing doesn't seem very sustainable
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I wonder will this cause other gaming companies to look at microtransactions differently? (2K, I'm looking at you).
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Lmao at CEmen thinking they know more about people out in the world making actual money on Wall Street
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They didn't cave to social media outrage. They caved to Disney bigfooting them and it's still only temporary.
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Doom_Art posted...

fire810 posted...

Disney absolutely wants Star Wars games out there. THEY MAY take away EA's license and give it to someone else.

I don't know that that would be legal, would it?

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Antifar posted...

"The escalation of EA concessions over the past month are a potential negative indicator of pre-order sales trends and overall unit confidence," analyst Justin Post wrote

thats all it takes to be in finance these days?

damn, I could figure that out when I was a 10 year old shitheel

Disney doesn't even have to take the license away. iirc the deal was only for 10 years and we're about halfway now, they just need to give it to someone else for 2023 - onwards
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Vyrulisse posted...

They didn't cave to social media outrage. They caved to Disney bigfooting them and it's still only temporary.

It wasn't that either, they had to get Belgium off their back.
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Wow, first time gamers have actually stood up and took a win (even if a small one) since the Xbox one announcement.

I would really like this to happen more often. And as far as EA goes, I think it'd be a smarter move on their part to limit the amount of crystals you can buy per month based on what you could unlock if you played an extra amount of time that is reasonable for at least 30% of gamers playing minus the average players make in that period. Especially considering that the temporary halt on p2w is going to be maybe a few weeks to a month tops.

Even some free to play games have this mechanic, so you can pay to make up for when you couldn't play, or get a slight edge that the gap between a player who pays and who doesn't can be made up with skill alone.
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JustMyOpinion posted...

fire810 posted...

JustMyOpinion posted...

M_Live posted...

Man, fuck Wall Street anyway.

For what? They predicted investors will see less of a return on the game which is probably true. Seems like you have no basis for your hate other than edgy kids think they're supposed to hate everything Wall Street does.

fuck Wall Street

Nice shitpost, kid.

Shut the fuck up. Wallstreet tanked the economy and got bailed out.
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itachi15243 posted...

Wow, first time gamers have actually stood up and took a win (even if a small one) since the Xbox one announcement.

A win?

Its bait and switch IMO. They say they will turn off the things people are complaining about at release so people still buy it, and then they just turn the loot boxes back on in a few weeks.

Great win. You all showed them...
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whitelytning posted...

itachi15243 posted...

Wow, first time gamers have actually stood up and took a win (even if a small one) since the Xbox one announcement.

A win?

Its bait and switch IMO. They say they will turn off the things people are complaining about at release so people still buy it, and then they just turn the loot boxes back on in a few weeks.

Great win. You all showed them...

Weird it's almost like I pointed out it was a small win. Gamers successfully used their wallets to make a company make some changes.

This almost never happens at all, and people should learn from this. If we band together we can make a change. Nice selective quotation though. It's almost like you ignored the rest of my post where I pointed out that pay to win would probably be back within a month, and gamers should now keep at it, demand some more changes. Something like a cap on how much you can spend to get ahead.

It's people like you that say shit like, "we only made a company make a few changes for us? We shouldn't even bother." That attitude is why companies feel comfortable doing this shit at all.
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Fuck all the hidden characters and things that make online unfair. There. Is. No. Campaign. Mode.
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southcoast09 posted...

Fuck all the hidden characters and things that make online unfair. There. Is. No. Campaign. Mode.

This!!!!
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