And Electronic Arts blatantly denies the accusations regarding Star Wars: Battlefront II, which triggered another response from Reddit. What an intense week start by EA…

Electronic Arts bought Respawn last week, which was founded by Jason West and Vince Zampella (formerly Infinity Ward-employees). Now they are under EA’s wings, which isn’t a good sign, especially after how the publisher shut down Visceral Games not too long ago. Zampella, the CEO of Respawn, has commented the following on VentureBeat : „It’s always a balance. You have to worry about security and foundation of the company. How do you get to new games while still maintaining old games? I am not worried. I think the creative freedom is still here. So we get the best of both worlds. Ultimately, it is a contract with EA. We have to collaborate well together, and that doesn’t change.

Ultimately, my message is we are still Respawn, and we are going to make the same games we did before, and hopefully better. Anyone who is a fan of Respawn should trust us that what we are doing what we think is best for the future of Respawn and our games. We intend to deliver to our fans everything and more than we did in the past.”

Patrick Söderlund, executive vice president of Electronic Arts, added his two cents: „When you worked inside EA at DICE, or BioWare or Vancouver, they all have creative freedom and creative integrity. There are different cultures in different locations. That’s what gets those studios to make great games. We are not interested in changing any of that. We want to keep what is great here. One of the reasons we are going into this acquisition is because of what Respawn is. It would be very unwise of us to change any of that.”

However, changing the games to more and more predatory monetization is good, it seems. Need For Speed: Payback (whose review will launch shortly, and let’s just say it’s… ridiculous), and Star Wars: Battlefront II both have loot boxes. We already wrote about the latter game’s estimates on how much time you need to unlock a hero or open a loot box.

Regarding this situation, a developer by the name of Sean responded on Twitter saying that the estimates are mostly inaccurate, saying that the Redditor did not provide more information than the devs (although that statement could be false…). He also added that Battlefront II is not pay-to-win, as you can unlock things with just playing the game – but you could say the same about mobile P2W games, and those games, no matter how we look at them, are still pay-to-win. Also, the estimate said sixty thousand credits are needed to unlock a hero, while the game’s site mentions just ten thousand (and apparently, reviewers also played a version with that figure, which is interesting…), which would cut down grinding from forty hours to just six and a half. We’d rather wait until the game’s out on November 17 on PlayStation 4/Xbox One/PC, though…

…or not! Another topic on Reddit popped up, which took the time to calculate how much time or money you’d need to unlock everything. If you bought the most expensive crystal packs only, you’d have to spend 2100 dollars to gain the required 3111 loot boxes. By playing the game, you’d have to spend 4528 hours to achieve the same result. 4528…? That’s almost 189 days without ever stopping. Are you insane?!

Source: VentureBeat, WCCFTech, Reddit