Electronic Arts has filed two patents based around online matchmaking that have still to be approved.
Though there seems nothing to worry about at first glance, it's only after a bit of digging by Destructoid that things start to unfold.
Now, we all know EA likes to make a bit of extra cash from microtransactions - you only have to look at the backlash surrounding Star Wars Battlefront 2 and the loot box scandal to see their morals are set fairly low when it comes to making a quick buck.
Now, the first patent is fairly straightforward. It's called Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment. It means that EA can tweak the difficultly in the game to enhance the user experience, perhaps by making the AI a little easier to defeat so you don't get too frustrated.
Of course, they could also use it to reduce the amount of XP you get in a game for example, so you have to grind for longer, thus encouraging you to buy your way through the levels with micro-transactions. But, it's a fairly standard patent that many games adopt.
The second patent is called Multiplayer video game matchmaking optimization and seems a lot more sinister. The matchmaking can be handled via their own algorithm, which is called Engagement Optimized Matchmaking (EOMM).
The official EA research paper for the program has also surfaced online in which it challenges the theory that matchmaking people together who are on the same or similar skill level isn't always beneficial to the player.
The overall objective, it claims, is to maximise user experience, but the key phrase that Destructoid has pulled out is that with EOMM they can “change the objective function to other core game metrics of interest, such as play time, retention, or spending. EOMM allows one to easily plug in different types of predictive models to achieve the optimization.”
Essentially, what some people believe this could be heading towards is that that EA would basically control you winning and losing matches via something called the Churn rate. The Churn rate determines the risk of a player quitting the game forever, and the developer could make adjustments accordingly to keep you playing. Lose too much and you'll get paired against easy-to-beat players, win too much and you'll be fighting against the best-of-the-best.
In Layman's terms: they could have the power to encourage you to dip into your pockets to buy microtransactions by tweaking things in game that keep your competitive juices flowing.
You could argue that some gamers will be all for that! Who doesn’t want to feel challenged, but also want to win more than they lose? Still, it’ doesn’t sound like an entirely fair way to matchmake if it’s not entirely based solely on skill levels, and based on EA’s past – and penchant for earning money from microtransactions – you can bet the real idea is to increase the size of their wallet.
These patents still haven't been pushed through, and they were filed way back in 2016, but with EA's growing trend to fleece gamers it's certainly something to keep an eye on.
Source: Destructoid