Gaming - News
Controversial Features Games Immediately Regretted
By BRYN GELBART
Overwatch 2
When it first launched, “Overwatch 2” required players to link a phone number to their Battle.net account, in an attempt to prevent banned players from returning to the game. This backfired when players with prepaid phone plans discovered their phone numbers weren’t being accepted, leading to a big backlash that forced Blizzard to back away from the feature.
Fallout 76
“Fallout 76” was not well received when it was released due to its lack of polish and the complete absence of NPCs in the game. At its core, "Fallout" is a role-playing series, and a hallmark of the RPG genre is talking to other characters, which is why voiced NPCs were eventually introduced in the 2020 "Wastelanders" expansion.
Diablo 3
“Diablo 3” introduced the Auction House, a place where players could buy and sell items for both in-game currency and real world money. The controversy over the feature was focused on the way it gave players the ability to purchase high-end gear right away, completely throwing off the balance of the game and eventually leading to its removal in 2014.
Battlefront 2
There were a lot of problems with the lootboxes in “Star Wars: Battlefront 2”: their inclusion on top of the game’s $60 price tag, their gatekeeping of iconic characters, and the ridiculous amount of hours it took to grind the in-game currency. EA quickly removed microtransactions entirely and later reintroduced them in the form of direct-purchase cosmetics in March 2018.
Deus Ex
Square Enix’s "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" was met with largely positive critical reception, but most critics agreed that the boss fights dragged the game down. The boss fights unfairly punished stealth builds, to the point where gameplay director Francois Lapikas even apologized for this fundamental imbalance at a 2012 GDC Talk.
