Star Wars Battlefront II Has Caused EA To Lower Profit Expectations For 2018

When backlash comes, it rarely comes in just one stroke. EA is learning this the hard way, as the fallout from the controversies surrounding Star Wars Battlefront II continue to arrive. The title was announced earlier in the year to much praise. For the game would feature all three generations of Star Wars, and would improve on everything the original (reboot) title did, including adding an original story mode, and giving players LOTS more content. Little did players know there would be a few major catches to this.

First off, there was going to be a very difficult progression system, one that would require a year of play (with massive hours spent every day playing it) to unlock everything. Then, there was the microtransaction system, which was so forced in the minds of many that not only did they refer to it as a “pay-to-win” system, but also to gambling.

Fans revolted, EA was forced to make changes on the fly, the governments of many nations took notice of this event and started asking if gambling was going on, and worst of all, the sales for the game didn’t meet expectations at launch.

In fact, the game didn’t even sell 1 million at launch, which was a huge downturn from what the original Battlefront did. And sales are apparently not going so well in the aftermath, as EA has reportedly decided to lower their profit expectations of the upcoming 2018 quarter. Instead of 14 million like they projected, they’re now going to hope for 11 million. This comes on top of EA’s stock take a hit of billions during Battlefront II debacle.

EA has long been called the “worst place to work” in the video game industry, but now, it’s been looked at in an even worse light. If things don’t change, it will continue to get worse for them.