EA is in trouble with Star Wars. Stock opening over 2% lower today. The last few days have been a firestorm of hate for EA with their aggressive monetization of SWB2, setting massive records on Reddit for downvotes of EA comments about it. Perhaps unrelated, Belgium's gambling commission is also investigating loot boxes in games, and Activision has delayed their MTX in CoD. First, EA back-pedaled and dropped the credits cost of unlocking heroes. Then yesterday they took MTX offline completely for some unspecified time. This story is saying, "Sources say a phone call with Disney", led to the decision, which is entirely believable since "Disney supporting gambling for kids" was going mainstream to CNN, BBC and others.

At the very least, this means less revenue from MTX. It may also mean reduced sales expectations, though it's very hard to tell if an angry mob is just piling on or if it represents actual millions of buyers. I note that October's NPD shows Shadow of War sales were up 20% over the previous games, despite the (smaller amount of) hate around launch for its implementation of loot boxes in a predominantly SP game.

At worst, Disney could be mad with EA for cancelling a Star Wars game recently and now this.

venturebeat.com/20...anges/