Electronic Arts (EA) is paying dearly for its mistakes in "Star Wars Battlefront II," as the company has now experienced a stock market drop after caving into its player base demands to waive microtransactions.
On Friday, Nov. 17, the stock market shares of the development and publishing company has dropped as much as 2.5 percent and closed at 108.82. While EA has been experiencing a market shares plateau over the past 11 weeks, this drop seems to have ruined the trend for the company.
This led to some financial analysts concluding that EA will disappoint its investors due to the most recent controversy it had regarding the microtransactions and loot-boxes in "Star Wars Battlefront II." Justin Post, from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch, has backed this up with an affirmation that the company indeed will suffer discouraging losses. He further added, "The escalation of EA concessions over the past month are a potential negative indicator of preorder sales trends and overall unit confidence."
The controversy began when the "Star Wars Battlefront" player base brought the game's paywall to the social media spotlight, with a majority complaining that EA's abusive and excessive gating of some of the game's features behind a premium currency was unfair and greedy.
Many pointed out that with these paywalls, more affluent players can simply pay their way into victory by buying loot-boxes, thereby gaining an upper hand against players who do not have enough money for the microtransactions. This was made worse by the fact that "Star Wars Battlefront II" is already a full-priced game, so players were expecting to be able to enjoy it in its entirety without having to pay additional charges.
Since then, EA has given in to the demands of enraged players and has temporarily suspended the game's microtransactions until further notice. It has also removed the premium in-game currency required to unlock some of the heroes. While this may be the right step to take for the company, it may cost them a lot, not just now, but in the long run as well since their investors might not see them as profitable as before according to Baird analyst Colin Sebastian.
Meanwhile, the actual sales of "Star Wars Battlefront II" has been marked 60 percent lower than that of its predecessor despite EA's actions. So far, EA's downward trend in stocks seems to have alleviated, as it's last reported stock drop is now only at 1.08 percent.
