Each loot box contains a random reward. You could get abilities to do more damage or move faster, or you might get a dud, like a "dance" emote for your character. And if you get that dud, you might spend even more money and up the chances of permanently becoming more powerful, like the ability to make Boba Fett fly around with 100 percent invincibility. It's why critics have called it "glorified gambling": You don't know what you're spending money on, but the more you spend, the higher the chances of winning.
As the website Rock Paper Shotgun explained, you could get those same benefits without spending real-life money, but you'd have to do it by playing matches against other players to earn fake game money, which could take dozens if not hundreds of hours.
Loot boxes have become increasingly normal in recent years, included in games like the popular shooter "Overwatch" as well as the recent "Call of Duty" game. Publishers claim that because development costs of top games rival Hollywood summer blockbusters, selling post-release digital content is needed to make up costs.
But with "Star Wars," creating a random loot economy raised flags because some consider the practice akin to gambling, and the brand is marketed heavily toward children. Beyond that, most other competitive games do not offer "pay to win" advantages, which imbalances the game to favor paying players.
Weeks of public outcry culminated in the game's publisher, EA, taking to Reddit to defend itself on the controversy. That comment became the most downvoted (or disliked) post in the site's 12-year history.
On Thursday night, the eve of the game's launch, EA said it had temporarily removed the in-game purchases.
"The ability to purchase crystals in-game will become available at a later date, only after we've made changes to the game," said Oskar Gabrielson, general manager of DICE, the game's developer. Crystals are the fake currency in the game you can buy for real money, which you then trade for loot boxes.
The Washington Post asked EA if players can be guaranteed that "pay to win" mechanics have been removed from the game.
"With regard to yesterday's announcement on pulling the in-game purchases for launch, we do not have anything further to share at the moment beyond Oskar's post," an EA spokeswoman said in response.
Belgium's gaming commission is investigating whether the game constitutes gambling. But EA asserts that the loot box mechanic (called "crates" in the Star Wars game) is not gambling.
"A player's ability to succeed in the game is not dependent on purchasing crates. Players can also earn crates through playing the game and not spending any money at all," said the EA spokeswoman. "Once obtained, players are always guaranteed to receive content that can be used in game."
On Thursday, Jimmy Pitaro, chairman of Disney's consumer products and interactive media division, made a call to EA hours before the decision was made to pull in-game purchases. The Wall Street Journal reported that the call was to express Disney executives' unhappiness at how the outrage "reflected on their marquee property."And a Disney/Lucasfilm spokesman said the company supports EA's temporary decision to end the crate-purchasing.
"'Star Wars' has always been about the fans - and whether it's 'Battlefront' or any other 'Star Wars' experience, they come first," the Lucasfilm spokesman told The Post on Friday. "That's why we support EA's decision to temporarily remove in-game payments to address fan concerns."
For years, critics and gaming psychologists have criticized loot boxes. While it may not legally be gambling, they say, the same intermittent nature of rewards and spending is in place.
"If you put it in fundamental terms, it's really the same thing," said Kimberly Young, a licensed psychologist and founder of the Center for Internet Addiction. "It's called gambling."
Loot boxes were popularized in China and Korea, where the practice is now regulated. Just this year, developers in China became required to disclose the probabilities of loot boxes in popular games like "Overwatch" and "Hearthstone." In 2012, South Korea introduced a law that would require major gaming companies to add features that let parents limit how long their children can play the video games.
"Americans are falling so far behind what other countries are doing, and it's all about profit," Young said. "You have gaming lobbyists who don't want us to talk about this. We just haven't had it come to a head yet."
EA's temporary pullback may seem like a milestone, but many gamers remain cynical, including Jim Sterling, a prominent games journalist. For years he's been warning the practice will only become more mainstream, which it now has with publishers like EA and Warner Bros getting in on the act. He dubbed 2017 "the Year of the Loot Box," blaming Activision-Blizzard's "Overwatch" for popularizing the concept.
"In the long run ... I believe companies will continue to see how far they can push the envelope," Sterling said to The Post. "This is far from the first time a publisher has reached for too much too quickly, had to walk it back and take baby steps toward its end goal of acquiring as much as cash for as little additional effort as possible."
He believes EA suspended the in-game purchase only to "curry favor with the audience and perhaps make those nervous investors a bit happier."
(On Friday, EA filed a note with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating that Thursday's decision "is not expected to have a material impact on EA's fiscal year 2018 financial guidance.")
Chief among Sterling's concerns is the fact that Activision-Blizzard patented a method to encourage these microtransactions. And EA and Activision-Blizzard are far from the only gaming behemoths testing the waters. Sterling said it's almost as if the entire industry "en masse is feeling out the limitations" of the trend.
"From my perspective, the incoming firestorm of retaliation (on the "Star Wars" game) was a given, but this is an industry run predominantly by alienated rich old guys who know little and care less about video games, so it would not surprise me in the least if they were completely taken by surprise when they faced their very own galactic rebellion," Sterling said. "Emperor Palpatine always thinks his Death Star is invincible until they blow it up. Electronic Arts and its insidious ilk aren't much different."
