Battlefield 3 Faces Battle With Boycotting Gamers

So the latest gamer-fuelled boycott of some triple A title is afoot.

This time those boycotting are no strangers to doing so — and totally not the n00bz that tried to boycott Modern Warfare 2 for its lack of dedicated servers two years ago — either, with DICE‘s highly anticipated military shooter, one Battlefield 3, being targeted after plans were revealed for downloadable content which will give pre-ordering consumers an advantage in multiplayer.

Because obviously they need it.

At the root of all this raging is the announcement of the Back to Karkand expansion pack, which comes free to pre-ordering gamers but will have to be purchased separately by everyone else. Only, if you choose the latter option, you won’t get the extra guns and ammo that come with the pre-order version of the game, entitled “Physical Warfare”.

Essentially that translates into gamers being “punished” for not committing to the game pre-release.

This isn’t the first time Electronic Arts have tried something like this. Prior to the release of Battlefield: Bad Company, one of my favourite international sites for gaming humour, SarcasticGamer.com, organised a boycott of the game that succeeded and left a lot of EA people a little shy-faced.

It remains to be seen whether this boycott will be as successful, but it might just be if it gets some proper backing over time.

Why on Earth EA tried something like this again, after already being shot in the face over it previously, only they know. Perhaps it was a DICE decision.

It seems then that not only has the gaming publisher declared war on the resale market with its ‘online pass’ system, but now they want to target those who wait for game reviews as well? Or am I the only person who sees it that way.

Don’t get me wrong, I love EA to bits, but I draw the line at being asked to pre-order a game to get the full benefit of it, and then probably having three straight patches on release day after paying full price…

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Name: Caveshen Rajman
Location: Durban
Position: Former Managing Editor

Caveshen has published 2177 posts. Read all of Caveshen's posts.

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