Microtransactions Have Been Pulled From Battlefront II (Temporarily)

Avatar photoBy Shannon Grixti

UPDATE 2: EA has now confirmed that all in-game purchases have been removed from the game temporarily. This means that all in-game items will be earned through progression rather than spending money.

EA provided the below statement which you can read on their blog. 

As we approach the worldwide launch, it’s clear that many of you feel there are still challenges in the design. We’ve heard the concerns about potentially giving players unfair advantages. And we’ve heard that this is overshadowing an otherwise great game. This was never our intention. Sorry we didn’t get this right.

We hear you loud and clear, so we’re turning off all in-game purchases. We will now spend more time listening, adjusting, balancing and tuning. This means that the option to purchase crystals in the game is now offline, and all progression will be earned through gameplay.

The ability to purchase crystals in-game will become available at a later date, only after we’ve made changes to the game. We’ll share more details as we work through this.

UPDATE 1 : MP1ST is reporting that Crystals are indeed being completely removed from the game with all Heroes, Star Cards and game-changing items being only obtained through natural progression.

Original Story: After potentially the biggest backlash in gaming history, it looks like EA have completely pulled microtransactions from Star Wars Battlefront II.

At the time of writing, Crystals (the in-game currency that could be purchased with real money) can no longer be purchased in game.

It’s unclear whether this means that all microtransactions will be pulled from the game, but we’ll keep you updated. It’d be interesting to see what would happen if crystals were no longer purchasable. Would that mean that all of the unlocks would go to a progression based system? Whilst this is possible, it seems like it’d be a lot of work to make this kind of change on the fly.

Before Crystals disappeared from the game, Kotaku US Editor Jason Schreiber Tweeted out that EA were about to pull an ‘Xbox One’. This would refer to the fact that Microsoft initially announced the Xbox One with huge DRM problems doing a complete backflip and removing it from the game.