misteryo: The effect on EA is that they will have to abandon the pay-to-win lootbox model going forward. And they were planning to find ways to insert this scheme throughout all their franchises. Imagine Dragon Age: The Pay-to-Win Lootbox Epic.
i will never buy or play Battlefront, but I will buy Dragon Age games and other AAA franchise title that they put out. As long as they don't move lootboxes in.
I would love to see that happen as much as the next guy, but EA Battlefront II still sold copies (albeit at a 50% drop compared to EABF1), even though we knew loot boxes would be in the game. Call of Duty WWII apparently had a massively successful launch, with opening weekend figures supposedly greater than Thor: Ragnarok and Wonder Woman's opening weekends combined. Destiny II was also wildly successful financially too. All three of these games have their own fair share of rabid defenders, who either resort to arguments that "games cost too much to make", or simply don't want to hear about Loot Boxes at all anymore.
My point is that even though more and more people are supposedly upset and angry over increasingly predatory and anti-consumer practices such as these, people are
still buying these games. And how many of the people who bought these games, and who will in all likelihood be placing their preorders for the next game, were the ones going on forums, social media or YouTube chanting slogans like "fuck EA" and "I will never buy another EA game again!"
Call me excessively cynical, but I'd wager that the vast majority of the people out there ragging on EA (and I don't necessarily mean the people here on this forum), or ActiBlizz or WB, would be more than willing to stand in line for the next Destiny, or Battlefield/front, or Call of Duty game the minute it gets announced. Add to that some random game industry exec publicly professing apologies and promises that "We'll change, no really, it'll be different this time!" and you have a customer base who'll keep coming back to you time and again, no matter what you do.
Once the gaming community and the gaming press forget all about loot boxes (and they will, within 1-3 months), EA will reenable loot boxes, and everything will return to the status quo. EA Battlefront III wiil be even more like a F2P/P2W mobile game, only that it'll not just be a full $60 retail release with loot boxes, but it'll be on an Office 365-style subscription plan with all of the requisite strong-arming to ensure that everyone switches to the subscription plan for the "full experience". There will be a massive public backlash for 1-3 months, and then everyone will forget about it, and we'll all wind up accepting it. Just like how we will with loot boxes, except the usual vocal corners of the internet, which will get marginalized by the mainstream. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I really want to be wrong about this. I really, really do.