Epic PR damage control failure earns company most downvoted Reddit comment in history

Game developers EA are having a nightmare online after a statement posted to Reddit became the most downvoted comment of all time on the site.

Those who buy EA's new title Star Wars Battlefront II will be tethered to their consoles for hours hoping to unlock big name characters such as Darth Vader, and EA thinks this will provide players with "a sense of pride and accomplishment".

The comment was a reply to a Reddit post bemoaning EA's decision to lock marquee characters such as Vader, Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca until players earn enough credit to unlock them.

But EA's weak attempt to calm the storm has resulted in more fury and its comment has (at the time of writing) been downvoted about 680,000 times.

To put that in perspective, the second most downvoted post on Reddit – which was a post specifically requesting to be downvoted – has just over 24,000 negative votes.

The thread "Seriously? I paid 80$ to have Vader locked?" was put up on Sunday (12 November) and EA replied on Monday (13 November).

The anger towards the game developer stems from a perceived trap to get players spending real money to improve their chances in combat. Gamers will need to log about 60 hours of gameplay (per character) before they can unlock Vader or Skywalker.

But for anyone not willing to wait that long, EA has added the option to buy credits with real money, which will save the players some time. One person discovered that to unlock everything in the game, it would either take 4,528 hours of gameplay or cost $2,100 (£1,600).

Players are also fuming that EA will award credits based on hours played instead of by points earned in the game.

EA has since backtracked and announced gamers would need 75% less credits to unlock the big-name characters. "We're making the changes to the credit levels for unlocking heroes and we're going to keep making changes to improve the game experience over time," the company said. "We welcome the conversation."