Hitting 'Em Where It Hurts, EA's Stocks Lose Over $3.1 Billion in a Month - SW Battlefront 2 News

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Hitting 'Em Where It Hurts, EA's Stocks Lose Over $3.1 Billion in a Month - SW Battlefront 2 News

EA's stocks have taken a huge hit over the course of the last month, losing 8.5% with investors seeing $3.1 billion in stock value erased. This is in contrast to the overall S&P rising 2% and Take-Two going up 5% and Activision-Blizzard stocks rising .7%. Wall Street analysts are attributing the fall to Star Wars Battlefront II and the controversy over loot boxes and progression. Sales of the game over the Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend were weak causing analysts to take note.

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Kootur

Bf1, me4 and now battlefront 2. It's been a bad year for ea.

ConstantineMerus

And people said all these whinings would result to nothing. Yeah count the fucking zeroes. 

Leon1e

Kootur said:

Bf1, me4 and now battlefront 2. It's been a bad year for ea.

BF1 was/is a smashing success, if you refer to Battlefield 1.

Ginaz

I'm more shocked that EA's stocks were worth anywhere $3 Billion to begin with.

Also HAHAHAHAHAHA. Suck it EA!

Scot

EA CFO Blake Jorgensen:

"Some people have more time than money, and some people have more money than time," he said. "You want to always balance those two."

To that end, the company is still committed to implementing microtransactions in some way, but is figuring out the right way to do that. "We're learning and listening to the community in terms of how best to roll that out in the future, and there's more to come as we learn more."

This war has not been won, EA is determined to keep the MT money rolling in. Also I see no recognition that there is anything wrong with gambling MT's.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2017/11/28/ea-doesnt-think-players-want-darth-vader-in-pink.aspx 

Arskaaa

good. let them rot to death.

Gobstopper3D

lmao.  Let me get this straight, skins won't work because they aren't canon, but a box appearing in front of you after a match, that contains a star card that magically boosts something for you is?  The more I hear EA try to defend this, the more moronic they sound.

Phry

Gorwe said:

Kootur said:

Bf1, me4 and now battlefront 2. It's been a bad year for ea.

Good, that's only fair. Reward failure with failure. Fair's fair and it ought to remain as such. JUSTICE!

If only they just made entertaining games, but even the quality of the games has degraded over time, introduction of loot boxes and their thinly veiled gambling mechanics, to games with political agendas that are increasingly antagonistic towards players depending on their ethnicity and gender.
Justice, maybe, i just call it natural consequences, because players will always vote with their wallets.

Kyleran

Scot said:

EA CFO Blake Jorgensen:

"Some people have more time than money, and some people have more money than time," he said. "You want to always balance those two."

To that end, the company is still committed to implementing microtransactions in some way, but is figuring out the right way to do that. "We're learning and listening to the community in terms of how best to roll that out in the future, and there's more to come as we learn more."

This war has not been won, EA is determined to keep the MT money rolling in. Also I see no recognition that there is anything wrong with gambling MT's.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2017/11/28/ea-doesnt-think-players-want-darth-vader-in-pink.aspx 

Of course they will keep MTs, the industry is raking in big bucks from GaaS (Gaming as a Service), I think SuperData pointed out EA makes a fortune in FIFA from them.

They just pushed the envelope too far in BF2, first trying to include items of power gamers almost had to buy to remain competitive (or so it was perceived, if not actual fact) then they got caught up in the recent RNG lootbox kerfluffel which is impacting multiple games and publishers.

They'll adjust and return with a model more palatable to the customer base and likely with the release of the new movie BF2 can "relaunch" with the more benign cash shop and still be reasonably successful.

LeFantome

and avoid the threat of regulation... it's coming anyways.

GladDog

Here is what will happen...

EA, and all of the others, will back off of MTs being needed to advance.  We will see a renaissance of old school systems, and this will last... about 6-10 weeks.  By that time the players will quiet down about the loot boxes and MT, and the lawsuits will be quagmired in court.  Then they will SLOOOOOOOWLY bring them back.

Why back off?  Because the losses from fewer MTs will be far less than if they do nothing and loot boxes and MTs become regulated by the government, very likely including another layer of taxes.

Gdemami

Scot said:
This war has not been won, EA is determined to keep the MT money rolling in. Also I see no recognition that there is anything wrong with gambling MT's.

Thinking otherwise would be delusional...

azarhal

So people dropped EA over lootboxes to go and invest into Take-Two that pretty much announced all their future games were going to be microtransaction heavy game as a service in the near future and Activision-Blizzard which already has super expensive microtransaction in a lots of their games.

lol

hyllyh

i wonder how will react the mouse.. (disney) with the movie coming out soon, it's really bad, bad bad bad

jmcdermottuk

Serves them right. Not that they'll change their ways. No doubt they'll be back at some point, trying to squeeze more money from players who already paid for the game but that's they way suits work.
Get us to pay for the game, make progression slow so we buy loot crates and they get another infusion of cash. They won't be happy until we've paid the box price 3 or 4 times over, greedy bastards.
The more we let them get away with this the more they will design games that require us to buy these crates to progress. They only way to win this is not to play, refuse to buy any game with this design.

dotdotdash

azarhal said:

So people dropped EA over lootboxes to go and invest into Take-Two that pretty much announced all their future games were going to be microtransaction heavy game as a service in the near future and Activision-Blizzard which already has super expensive microtransaction in a lots of their games.



lol

The mistake you're making is seeing Take-Two's statement about recurrent consumer spending as entirely comparable to EAs implementation of loot boxes. There's a vast difference between EAs approach to the loot box model, versus Take-Two's approach to currency/items (ala GTA V). I doubt the loot box model was included in Take-Two's plans, at least not in any form that resembles EAs efforts, given not just the controversy surrounding SWBF2, but most other games that have loot boxes that alter or enhance game performance in some way.

In short, Take-Two's approach ( up until this point ) hasn't been predatory, where EAs has.

Coolit

By the time this has all been said and done they will probably lose a lot more. Sadly it's probably the little people in EA that will feel the consequences not the decision makers as always

Slapshot1188

Too bad that Username guy isn't around any more... 
He's the one that was spouting off how protests don't matter and how much money EA was going to make while the forum warriors whined.  

Guess who's whining now?

btdt

Just means I will be able to get BF2 for $20 in a month... 

Iselin

Scot said:

"Some people have more time than money, and some people have more money than time," he said. "You want to always balance those two."

Nice pitch designed to make paying for shortcuts sound cool. People that actually play the game to earn power? Well, let's not outright call them no-lifers but, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more.

crowchuckle

EA before the lootbox flame vs after the lootbox flame

Iselin

Ginaz said:

I'm more shocked that EA's stocks were worth anywhere $3 Billion to begin with.

Also HAHAHAHAHAHA. Suck it EA!

Try 37.5 billion if 8% = 3 billion. Yup they need those loot boxes or else they'll go broke!

Dauzqul

I just don't understand why companies don't discuss anything related to finances here at mmorpg.com. I mean, every person here is a master economist.

Dauzqul

Scot said:

EA CFO Blake Jorgensen:

"Some people have more time than money, and some people have more money than time," he said. "You want to always balance those two."

To that end, the company is still committed to implementing microtransactions in some way, but is figuring out the right way to do that. "We're learning and listening to the community in terms of how best to roll that out in the future, and there's more to come as we learn more."

This war has not been won, EA is determined to keep the MT money rolling in. Also I see no recognition that there is anything wrong with gambling MT's.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2017/11/28/ea-doesnt-think-players-want-darth-vader-in-pink.aspx 

Screw that game. MTs for a tiny First-Person Shooter? Seriously?!

GeezerGamer

I remember when this site used to discuss games......oh well.