The Star Wars Battlefront II Conspiracy

With Star Wars Battlefront II microtransactions infuriating a lot of people, one EA employee claimed to have received several death threats. For this very reason, the fan movement against EA came under fire. Threatening a life over game features is just grotesque and is a line no community should cross, which is why news outlets like BBC, USAToday, and Yahoo all reported on the incident. But here’s the thing, the EA employee who received threats may not work for EA.

A thorough investigation by Kotaku’s Jason Schreier revealed… well, nothing. The supposed employee, who goes by the Twitter handle BigSean66, is shrouded in mystery. For starters, there are no clues to his true identity beyond social media accounts. What is more, a review of BigSean’s online social life revealed inconsistencies. In one tweet, he reveals his status as a new employee; in another, he says he’s been with the company for years. Then he’s doing one job and then doing another. At one point, he even claimed to be a dev. Then, EA had this to say:

“We take threats against our employees very seriously. Our first concern is ensuring safety and support for our people, and since the reports first surfaced we’ve been investigating this internally. At this time, we’re not able to verify this individual’s claims of employment at EA, nor the threats made against him.”

So, what’s the deal? BigSean66 went completely silent after Schreier contacted him. Which means we have no lead that can verify the death threats on account of Star Wars Battlefront II. In other words, the entire fiasco may be fake. Maybe, the gaming community is a little less rancid than we thought. Not to say devs and employees from companies like EA aren’t still facing animosity and harassment. The battle between fans and big game publishing rages on, however. At the very least, let’s hope it does so without any lives coming under threat.

Kotaku