The drama around Star Wars Battlefront 2's aggressive in-game microtransactions came well before the game's official release on November 17th. While EA decided to pull microtransactions for the time being, the damage has been done.
U.S. state representatives have taken aim at the game and the 61 percent decline in sales between Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: Battlefront II shows that the game community has decided to pass on the game for now.
EA has taken an even bigger hit, thanks to all of this drama. It has been noted that EA's stock has " down 8.5 percent month to date through Tuesday compared with the S&P 500's 2 percent gain, wiping out $3.1 billion of shareholder value," according to CNBC.
On Friday, October 31st, EA sat a spike in the charts – this was the same day they announced changes to their loot box practices. Afterwards, there was a drop and a brief stabilization prior to the game's release. This was followed by a drop that has continued and has brought EA to its lowest point yet.
While this seems tragic, it should be noted that EA has been at the top of their charts for a long while. If you look at their 5-year chart, EA's stock is still higher than where it was last year.
According to EA, the disruption that Battlefront 2 has caused will not affect earnings. The microtransactions in their celebrated sports games have brought in $800 million, which should aid in them hitting their earnings goal for 2017.
EA is planning on integrating microtransactions back into Battlefront 2, citing the success of their sports games as a reason to pursue the correct method of implementing microtransactions in other genres. Blake Jorgensen, the CFO of EA, has made it clear that EA would rather not use cosmetic transactions because they do not want to "violate" the Star Wars canon.
