Loot boxes are starting to become something of a trend in video games these days, as microtransactions start becoming more and more of an issue that people are talking about. Games such as Middle-Earth: Shadow of War have featured loot boxes, while upcoming ones such as Star Wars: Battlefront II will do the same. A lot of people are expecting games to move more and more in that direction- and EA’s titles more than any others, especially ones like the upcoming Anthem.
A former BioWare developer, Manveer Heir, recently spoke out against EA’s monetization policies, criticizing the publisher for caring only about high returns on their investments rather than making a good game, and another member of Anthem’s development team, Brenon Holmes, has now spoken about these comments through several comments on Reddit posts.
Holmes firstly said that the involvement of loot boxes in Anthem isn’t something that is set in stone, calling it an ongoing discussion within BioWare. He then went on to assure people that the team at BioWare is full of gamers as well, and a lot of people in the team share similar views on monetization policies- which is definitely encouraging, if nothing else.
In another comment on another thread, Holmes said that Heir wasn’t part of the team working on Anthem, and having never worked on the game, he is “definitely not in the know” about how BioWare and EA may or may not monetize Anthem. He then went on to clarify that he was only speaking about Anthem, and not the larger issue of microtransactions and monetization.
Sure, none of this points towards the fact that Anthem won’t have similar microtransactions- for all we know, it will, especially considering the fact that it’s an online focussed open world experience. That said, it’s good to see that people within BioWare do share similar views against such policies. Whether that will make any difference is something that remains to be seen.