EA gets roasted at The Game Awards over microtransaction controversy

EA is one of, if not the biggest games publisher in the entire industry. They have their hands in almost every major sports property, original iconic IPs like Battlefield, and probably the biggest thing under their umbrella, Star Wars. While they've received quite a lot of heavy criticism over the year, this year was really rough in particular.

After the lukewarm reception of 2015's Star Wars Battlefront, EA and DICE knew they had to go big with the sequel. That meant introducing a meaty single-player campaign that's canonical in the Star Wars mythos, making worthwhile maps, and fine-tuning the gameplay. While it appears that they made an effort, Battlefront II wasn't received incredibly well and had incredibly disappointing first month sales, selling less than a million copies at retail.

A big part of the reason the game hasn't succeeded is due to the heavy amount of microtransactions in the game which some have deemed as "pay to win" meaning you pay money for random in-game items that could potentially give you a significant advantage over other players. After an insane amount of backlash and rumblings of legal trouble, EA pulled the microtransactions from the game but the damage had already been done.

The controversy was heavily joked about at last night's Game Awards with various guests dissing the company for their practices, Bethesda even went as far as to make a PSA about how important single player games are after hearing EA state no one wants single-player games anymore.

Zachary Levi got a big laugh when he poked fun at the company when announcing the winner of an award stating that he needed to pay for a microtransaction to open the winner's envelope. One person did show some empathy for the publisher, though.

A Way Out (published by EA) developer Josef Fares stole the show when he had an incredibly long, unscripted appearance to show off the game. While it seemed he wasn't in favor of the microtransactions, he stated that "every publisher fucks up". He went on to say that EA has treated him and his team incredibly well and it can't be debated that EA is indeed taking a risk on his game which is a narrative-driven co-op only game. While it is co-op, it has many aspects of a single-player game.

Maybe EA has been ragged on pretty hard and they took a lot of the blame for a problem that has plagued the industry, it's something that could be discussed heavily and we strongly recommend a nice, civil conversation in the comments below.

Star Wars Battlefront II is out now on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.