It was late 2017. EA was about to launch Star Wars Battlefront II, one of the most anticipated titles of the decade. People were stoked. Then, the Reddit thread happened. A user complained that even after paying $60 for the game, iconic characters like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker were locked behind an absurd amount of "credits." To unlock Vader, you basically had to grind for 40 hours. Or, you know, just open your wallet and buy loot boxes.
The community was furious.
An official Electronic Arts community representative stepped into the fray on Reddit to explain the logic. They wrote: "The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes."
Boom.
That single sentence didn't just backfire; it became the most downvoted comment in the history of Reddit. It currently sits at over 667,000 downvotes. It wasn't just a PR blunder. It was a cultural reset for how we talk about monetization, psychology, and what it actually feels like to achieve something in a digital space.
The Psychology of the "Grind" vs. The Paywall
Psychologically, we crave the win. We want to feel like we earned it. This is tied to the dopaminergic pathways in our brains—the reward system that fires when we overcome a challenge. According to self-determination theory, developed by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, humans are driven by three basic needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
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Competence is the big one here.
When you spend weeks mastering a difficult boss in Elden Ring, that feeling when the "LEGEND FELLED" text pops up is a genuine sense of pride and accomplishment. You didn't buy that win. You practiced. You failed. You got better.
But EA tried to use that psychological high to justify a math problem.
If the "accomplishment" is just surviving a 40-hour boredom gauntlet designed to make you frustrated enough to spend $20, the psychology breaks. It feels manipulative. Gamers saw through it immediately because the "pride" wasn't in the gameplay; it was in the endurance of a predatory system. Honestly, it’s kinda fascinating how a marketing team thought they could rebrand a pay-to-win mechanic as a psychological benefit.
How the Industry Reacted (And Why It Still Happens)
The fallout was massive. Disney, which owns Star Wars, reportedly stepped in. Bob Iger, then-CEO of Disney, was rumored to be unhappy with the negative press reflecting on the brand. Just hours before the game’s official launch, EA flipped the switch and disabled all in-game purchases.
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It was a total retreat.
But did the industry learn? Sorta. We saw a shift away from literal loot boxes in many "AAA" games, moving instead toward Battle Passes. Think Fortnite or Call of Duty. The "sense of pride" is now sold through a tiered progression system. You see what you’re getting, but you still have to put in the hours—or pay to skip the levels.
The terminology changed, but the goal remained the same: engagement metrics.
What a Real Sense of Pride and Accomplishment Looks Like
If you want to see this done right, look at Celeste or Hollow Knight. These games are brutally difficult. They don't have microtransactions to skip the hard parts. When you reach the top of the mountain in Celeste, that feeling is visceral. It’s real.
Here is why those games succeed where the Battlefront logic failed:
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- The challenge is fair. When you die, it’s your fault, not a result of a stat deficiency that could be fixed with a credit card.
- The reward is the mastery itself. The "achievement" isn't a badge or a skin; it's the fact that you can now do something you couldn't do an hour ago.
- Respect for the player's time.
In contrast, modern "live service" games often treat player time as a resource to be harvested. They create "artificial scarcity." They make the game intentionally tedious so they can sell you the solution to that tedium. That isn't pride. That's a ransom.
The Legal Aftermath of the Loot Box Era
The 2017 controversy didn't just stay on Reddit. It reached the halls of government.
Regulators in Belgium and the Netherlands started looking at loot boxes as a form of unlicensed gambling. In 2018, the Belgian Gaming Commission ruled that loot boxes in games like Overwatch and FIFA were illegal under their gambling laws. This forced companies to change how they sold digital items in those regions.
Even the UK's House of Lords got involved, eventually calling for loot boxes to be regulated under gambling legislation. The "sense of pride and accomplishment" line effectively acted as a catalyst for a global conversation about ethics in game design. It exposed the "Skinner Box" mechanics that had been creeping into gaming for a decade.
Actionable Takeaways for Navigating Modern Games
If you're a gamer or a parent trying to figure out if a game is actually fun or just a digital treadmill, keep these things in mind:
- Audit the "Fun-to-Grind" Ratio. If you find yourself playing a game just to "get it over with" so you can unlock a character, you aren't experiencing accomplishment. You're doing unpaid labor. Stop.
- Watch for "Time-Savers." If a game sells "XP Boosters" or "Currency Packs," it means the developers have intentionally slowed down the progression to make those packs look appealing. The game is literally designed to be less fun so you'll pay to play it less.
- Support Skill-Based Achievements. Look for games where the rewards are tied to specific feats of skill. In World of Warcraft, certain mounts used to mean you had defeated the hardest boss on the highest difficulty. That carried social capital. That was a real sense of pride and accomplishment.
- Read the Room. Before buying a new release, check the community sentiment on places like Reddit or Steam reviews. If the phrase "predatory monetization" comes up more than three times, the "accomplishment" probably isn't worth the price of entry.
The lesson from 2017 is simple: you can't manufacture a feeling. You have to design an experience that earns it. Pride comes from the struggle, not the transaction. Anything else is just a line in a corporate spreadsheet.