Indie gaming is a hard thing to do. You need to get a team, make a great game, make sure people see your game, and then hope the sales come in. But, when a hit comes, it comes. Take, for example, Plants Vs. Zombies. The hit game featured players controlling various plants to kill an army of zombies. The game made George Fan a legend in the development community and put his indie team PopCap on the map. Which, got them bought up by EA. But, that’s where the problems started.
For according to Edmund McMillen, who is Fan’s friend and the creator of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, told the Roundtable Live! podcast that when EA bought PopCap, they wanted to put a Pay-2-Win system in the game, allowing for in-game purchases by players who wanted a leg up of sorts. But, Fan didn’t want that at all.
“He’s like “I dunno, that’s not really a good idea and I don’t want to do that with my game.””
Because of this “defiance”, EA reportedly fired him, and then made the Plants Vs. Zombies sequel, and did indeed put microtransactions in it, where it has remained ever since. Much to the horror of McMillen, Fan’s story has not be told until now.
“This is such a newsworthy thing and it’s frustrated me for years that there aren’t news stories about this,” said McMillen.
Now, should you be wondering, “Why is this relevant?”, it’s because EA has been accused of putting a steep “gambling” system in their games, including the recent Battlefront II. This accusation got so big that EA actually turned off all in-game purchases for the time being.
As for Fan himself, he apparently is going to be making a statement on what happened tomorrow. Either way he states it, it’s going to be something we all want to hear.
