Blog:The Worst? The Most Lazy? Or The Most Foolish?

EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II is arguably the most controversial game in this decade. While EA and DICE has changed the F2P styled progression into a more conventional one, the damage was already done and Battlefront II’s image is forever stained in the eyes of gamers. And this recent incident didn’t exactly help either.

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The Commander Cody mod for Battlefront II displayed in the following trailer is said to be a one man project crafted by Rollokster. This mod is cosmetic only, featuring special UI, sounds, model-files, voice-lines, and textures etc that literally put’s DICE’s skins to sham. It was so well received that players of BFII actually claimed that DICE should hire him. No changes to the gameplay was added in order not to trigger EA’s notoriously shoddy FairFight anti-cheat system.

Despite all his caution, Rollokster was banned anyway, the reason was that he changed the model of Finn’s blaster despite that fact that the change didn’t impact the gameplay in any way and weapon mods like his exist before. The most likely reason for that is that weapons and projectiles were recently made server authoritative, meaning that anything out of the ordinary about the way a player’s gun behaves, the game will reject the shots fired with the modified weapon (Do that long enough and you'll get kicked by FairFight). Even as we speak, Rollokster remains permanently blocked on Star Wars Battlefront II.

Now let’s take a look at another gaming company that shares a similar name with the modder we’re talking about—Rockstar Games. Back in June 2017, Take Two Interactions forced Good-NTS to discontinue the popular modding tool OpenIV because they don’t want people to make mods for their main source of money—GTA Online. Ignoring the fact that OpenIV is designed to mod GTA V single player mode. This is a great blow to both the modding community and the machinima production community. And after immense backlash from the players, Rockstar Games apologized to fans and later re-released OpenIV even though they pretty much played no part in its discontinuation.

More than 10 years ago, Rockstar was pressured by multiple lawsuits over the infamous Hot Coffee Incident, being blamed over something that was normally inaccessible in their game. Because the Hot Coffee was uncovered by modder Patrick W, Rockstar pinned the blame on the modding community, that the modders are “making significant technical modifications to and reverse engineering the game’s code”. This, of course, angered the modding community: It’s your fault that you left the codes and animations in the game intact, and both GTA III and Vice City have many mods, can you blame us for our curiosity?! However, Rockstar sent the modders a message in secret, claiming that the only reason they did so was because the situation is heated and they were only trying to save face, and that they are still supportive of the modders for making the game more popular and colorful.

Then let’s take a look at another online game developer, Gaijin Entertainment from Russia.



This is the Heinkel 219 Uhu heavy night fighter, if you wonder what makes this aircraft so special, it’s not because of its ejector seat, it’s because it’s the first War Thunder vehicle that’s created by the fans.

And the He 219 isn’t the only one, eventually other vehicles like the Ta 154 heavy interceptor and the P40 medium tank will also follow. Fans who created the vehicle will receive 25% of the income the content he/she creates generates.

Seriously, I can’t help but wonder if EA is literally trying to commit career suicide. They have stirred up enough controversies already with Battlefront II’s loot box system, if they were wise they should at least try to improve their service and games, instead, they stir up more controversy and hate with PCField V and did nothing when a prominent member of Battlefront II gets wrongfully blocked by an anti-cheat system known for its unreliability. No matter how or which aspect you compare EA with other gaming companies, EA nearly always gets put under the worse light: Rockstar let the modders have fun while using other methods to prevent hakcers and cheaters from getting their own way, Gaijin rewards players who create content they found acceptable, and EA relies makes modders lives harder with their shoddy software and lack of support.

Being a giant company with tons of capital, it’s unlikely that EA will collapse even with 10 muck ups. But I sincerely hope that they get reduced to a company that relies on rehashing sport games to stay alive, should they remain as incorrigible as ever.

