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One of the main criticisms of Battlefront II was that you had to play for 40 hours to unlock Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker, figures that many would regard as poster boys for the game.ĮA’s own poster boy, Cristiano Ronaldo, makes a mockery of this figure. But let’s have a look at the figures behind this. The first of these is true, to an extent. I envisage a couple of main defences for FIFA in this argument: that you can earn coins by playing matches, and that the ingame trading market allows players to avoid spending real cash. In my book, using real money to buy in-game advantages is the definition of pay-to-win. As in Battlefront II - whose star cards are not so unlike FIFA’s cards - they cannot be bought directly, and you are forced to open packs to get items that can be sold for coins which, in turn, can be used to buy players. With the exception of cosmetic items, these cards give you tangible in-game advantages, and, they can be bought. Like other, heavily criticised loot boxes, they contain a mix of essential items (players and managers), cosmetic items (kits, balls, stadiums) and boosters and modifiers (coaches, training cards).ĮA’s FIFA Ultimate team cards are one example of a controlled, card-based economy. The loot boxes (called ‘packs’) in FIFA may look different to those in Battlefront II and Call of Duty: WWII, but they are there just the same. FIFA was doing it as early as 2008 in FIFA 09.īut does it feature similar gambling and pay-to-win mechanics to Battlefront II? An article on Gamer Professionals named Dead Space 3 (2013) as the earliest ‘AAA’ title to start pedalling microtransactions. But I think there is a deeper, more worrying reason: I have been anaesthetised to it by playing FIFA’s ‘Ultimate Team’ for years.įIFA has quietly gone under the microtransaction and loot box radar in critical discourse for years (perhaps because it is relatively niche in America) but it is arguably the most relevant game in the whole debate.įor a start, the sheer longevity that FIFA has been employing the same tactics that have attracted so much derision in Battlefront II is astounding. Partly - as someone who has been talking about microtransactions for years, and more recently writing about it - I simply wasn’t surprised. When EA hit the headlines for the controversy surrounding the pay-to-win mechanics, loot boxes, and microtransactions in Star Wars: Battlefront II, I have to admit I was not as struck by it as many people were.