EA and loot boxes, loot boxes and EA. In some people's minds, there is no better pairing save for "gamers" and "rising up." For the past several years now, the studio has been repeatedly under fire for how they included loot boxes in many of their titles. They have included loot box mechanics in games like Madden with their Madden Ultimate Team card packs, FIFA with the similar Ultimate Team mode, Battlefield 1, and perhaps most notably, Star Wars Battlefront 2.
In fact, it's probably the massive backlash to the Battlefront 2 loot boxes that pressured EA to go and make some changes to loot boxes in their titles. You can see some results of those changes by the fact that Battlefield V doesn't have any of these RNG style loot boxes. The studio also did a major overhaul to how loot boxes were handled in Battlefront 2 as a result of this consumer pushback.
Now, EA wants to distance themselves even further from the term "loot box" entirely. Are they fully doing away with loot boxes in current and future games? No. They are instead going to start calling them "surprise mechanics" as a replacement for "loot boxes." This is the word from Kerry Hopkins, the VP of legal and government affairs at EA. Hopkins provided this statement and more as evidence with the UK Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee. Hopkins goes on to say that these "surprise mechanics" are akin to surprise toys found in things like "Kinder Eggs, or Hatchimals, or LOL Surprise."
EA, by way of Hopkins, goes on to say that "the way we have implemented these kinds of mechanics(...) is actually quite ethical and quite fun, quite enjoyable to people." Though EA agrees with some gambling commissions that found
Just keep this idea of the "quite ethical surprise mechanics" in mind when future game releases promise not to include "loot boxes."
(via PCGamesN)
