Over the last several months, EA has been met with plenty of criticism over Star Wars Battlefront II and its microtransactions. The publisher has tried to quell these concerns in recent weeks but with the final game now available to play as a ten-hour trial, many have been left unimpressed by the changes. Perhaps most critically, it turns out that hero characters take up to 40 hours to unlock via gameplay alone. This led to complaints on the Battlefront subreddit, and EA’s response there did not go down well.

In a post titled “Seriously? I paid $80 to have Vader locked?”, the EACommunityTeam account responded by saying that “the intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes”. I don’t know about you, but to me, 40 hours of gameplay to unlock a single character seems like a frustrating waste of time, rather than a fun challenge.

Here is the full response from the EA Community account:

“The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes. As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay. We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets. Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.”

The response hasn’t been received well, at the time of writing, it has 138,000 downvotes and is now the most downvoted comment on all of Reddit. The main reason for all of the negativity is that heroes can be unlocked via microtransactions, so the ’40 hours of gameplay’ requirement seems like an attempt to force players to cough up cash, rather than to provide them with “a sense of pride and accomplishment”.

KitGuru Says: Negative comments about Battlefront II’s microtransactions started back when the game was still in alpha. At this point, the community reaction should not be a surprise to EA’s executives. It should have been nipped in the bud then. The Star Wars franchise might be beloved by many, but that doesn’t mean you can get away with blatantly exploiting it to this level.

Become a Patron!