The main controversy centered around the progression system in the multiplayer game – one which allowed players to purchase “loot boxes” to gain a random reward. These rewards could be used to customize playable characters or increase the player’s power in one way or another. This issue was only heightened with limitations on players who decided to invest their time to earn the in-game unlocks instead of paying to skip the grind. This landed the team in hot water among growing talks of wider gambling classification and regulation problems in video games. Despite this backlash being highly vocal, EA doubled down on both the practices being criticized and their own publicity attempts.
(Source)
In November 2016, EA broke the record for the most downvoted comment in the history of Reddit. Their reply to a disgruntled fan was received terribly, and their own disastrous AMA was held 3 days later, helping to fan the flames of a backlash so severe that it transcended the company and is affecting the video game industry as a whole. That’s no exaggeration either – the product inspired governments including that of Belgium and the state of Hawaii to alter their gambling classification laws to include the practices seen in Star Wars Battlefront 2. EA’s stock value also fell by more than 8%, albeit temporarily. While not entirely due to the AMA (the issue has been growing for years, with this just being the latest and greatest example), the disastrous event could have easily been avoided and perhaps even served to limit the damage to EA’s reputation if they had stopped and asked whether this was a good idea. The same could even be said of the decision to include these systems in the product in the first place – by examining the current attitude towards these practices and the disappointment surrounding the previous installment in the Battlefront series, it should have been clear that 5/9