Editor's note: As of Thursday, EA has confirmed to CNBC that it was "not able to verify this individual's claims of employment at EA, nor the threats made against him." The company statement was first reported by gaming news site Kotaku. As of Wednesday, the profile had been made private and references to the company had been removed from the bio.
's new "Star Wars" title is still days away from the official launch, but "Battlefront II" and its lofty in-game prices have already provoked outrage among gamers.
Reddit users on the page r/StarWarsBattlefront flooded the site over the weekend with comments disparaging the difficulty of unlocking certain characters to be used in the game and vowing to boycott the title upon its official release Friday.
A post titled "Seriously? I paid 80$ to have Vader locked?" — naming Darth Vader as one of the characters that needs to be unlocked through extensive gameplay or in-game purchases — garnered nearly 3,000 comments before the thread was locked — one from an official EA company account that became the most downvoted Reddit comment in history, according to Venture Beat.
The official response defended the game's progression milestones as "challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable" and said the company wanted to "provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment."
In just 18 hours, the comment earned more than 250,000 negative points.
A Reddit spokesperson said the company does not maintain a ranking history and so can't confirm that the comment is the most downvoted.
Here's the full comment:
The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.
As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we're looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we'll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.
We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets.
Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.
The outrage runs so deep that someone who professes to be a developer claims to have received death threats. A Twitter user who goes by the name Sean and claims to be a EA developer in his bio tweeted Monday morning that the game has inspired "personal attacks."
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