It seems like EA can’t catch much of a break as of late, as following their divisive reveal of skate. last week, an internal leak of the game's playtest builds revealed the existence of the dreaded loot boxes. Those should not even be there if we’re going to go by the statements the developers made in “The Board Room” video for skate.
The leak was shared by a user on Reddit which showed an early screenshot of skate. In a section of the Skatepedia is an entry called Unlockables & Product Boxes, and further in is a whole tab for something called Swag Bags. Each Swag Bag costs 100 Taps, which is assumedly the in-game currency for skate.
The leak, much like the reveal of the game’s free-to-play, live-service model, received a divisive reaction. Some were disappointed, yet unsurprised, at another one of Electronic Arts’ perceived lies. That said, others in the same thread defended the existence of these Swag Bags in the game, reasoning that they are not something that can be bought with real money and that players can just choose not to buy them or support the game as a whole. Indeed, a further look at the description states that Taps are earnable by “exploring Fun City and completing FCCC Challenges.”
However, this statement alone is not a guarantee that these Taps are indeed only acquirable through in-game activities and events. It would not be surprising at the very least if EA makes Taps a purchasable commodity once the game launches, and the publisher could simply reason that these Taps do not give players any gameplay advantages nor do they lock map areas behind paywalls, aspects that they have promised in their video.
At the end of the day, whether skate’s “loot boxes” constitute EA breaking its promise of no loot boxes is something for individual players to discern. The gaming industry as a whole has progressed to a majority of players simply not caring about loot boxes and microtransactions at all, given that they are prevalent in most AAA titles released by major publishers. However, there are still some with different standards on what should be in the games they play, and as long as these players exist we can be thankful that publishers will be reluctant to go all out on their monetization schemes as there will always be someone to call them out on it.
