Loot boxes may not return to Star Wars: Battlefront II

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When EA halted real-money transactions in Star Wars: Battlefront II last month, the company said it was a temporary move that would be reversed "at a later date... only after we've made changes to the game." Now, an EA executive suggests that later date for the return of microtransactions may never come.

"Over time we'll address how we will want to bring the [microtransactions] either into the game or not and what form we will decide to bring it into," EA CFO Blake Jorgensen said in remarks to NASDAQ's investor conference earlier this week. That "or not" is the first public indication that the in-game purchases, which were heavily integrated into the game's progression system at first, might never come back.

"Clearly we are very focused on listening to the consumer and understanding what the consumer wants and that's evolving constantly," Jorgensen said. "But we're working on improving the progression system. We turned the [microtransactions] off as an opportunity to work on the progression system inside the game. We're continuing to update that...