In a move straight out of the Empire's handbook, the loot boxes, which contain gameplay enhancing items, in EA's upcoming Star Wars Battlefront II will be purchasable. Although the game is still in the alpha, according to EuroGamer, EA has confirmed this is not a mistake, at least for now. In regards to the loot boxes, EA has said, "for those that want to accelerate the rewards, they can do so by purchasing crates that contain randomised [sic] items and rewards."
Micro-transactions have becoming something of a begrudgingly accepted evil in modern gaming, almost entirely thanks to the mobile gaming scene. So many mobile games, primarily those that are free to download, are designed around incentivizing the player to pay real money to fill their stamina bar or earn in game currency to buy better things. These tiny-buys moved onto consoles and PC, but in a slightly different form. The only way players would tolerate in game purchases was if the items for sale were vanity only. Vanity items include skins, animations, mounts, etc., essentially anything that did not give the player any kind of advantage over players who didn't make that purchase. It also helped if those items could be gained in game without money, with favorable RNG.
Loot boxes acted like the booster packs you would buy for collectible card games. A randomized assortment of loot you earned by playing the game, or buy spending real money. Overwatch has done well with this system, and the added funds Blizzard earns allows new content to come out for free. That could be the reasoning behind these loot boxes in Star Wars Battlefront II, as the first season of DLC will be completely free.
However, the problem is in the content of the lootboxes. Items that increase a hero's in-game performance are found in Battlefront II's lootboxes. Once the content of drops includes performance enhancing items, being able to use real money to buy them makes the whole thing scummy and unacceptable. Some players might rationalize this as okay as it means free DLC, but they are 100% wrong. Hopefully this system is changed before the game's release, because otherwise the game will be a Day-Never buy.
