BIG BUDGET video games are being inflicted with a new scourge — microtransactions, a business model where customers can pay small amounts of money to buy digital in-game items or to skip whole parts of a game they already paid £50 for.

Assassin’s Creed Origins, For Honour, Fifa 18, Madden 18, Middle Earth: Shadow of War, Call of Duty: WWII and many more titles this year are all trying to squeeze as much money from their players as possible. But none has tried quite so brazenly as Star Wars Battlefront II (SWBII).

Released last week (November 17), SWBII is a first-person shooter set in the Star Wars universe in which players blast it out online in huge 40 vs 40 battles as general grunts and cannon fodder from either the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire.