I'm sadly going to be realistic and I have to agree with other ones here stating that there is no going back. I'll tell you that I've already seen this kind of effort previously, it doesn't work with EA. Do you remember the last time something like this was successful? Unfortunately I don't, and if it was, it was only a small attempt of a few developers to make something continue, and it doesn't.
I'm sure this is EA's fault. It has happened with other franchises and they have other living dead games only for the purpose of taking people's money. Example, Maxis and The Sims, Plants vs Zombies 2 (mobile game that never reached PC or other platforms because it was designed as a cash grab), Dead Space, Command & Conquer.
Pvz BfN was another game with a lot of potential but also unfair with the microtransactions (Rux is a disaster in this game). EA just uses the "game as a service" strategy to rip their costumers as much as they can, then they abuse it so much that they end killing franchises (and their studios). Have you heard about PvZ3? The devs said long ago that the game was made to coexist with PvZ2 and it's something new (like they said with BFN). First, the game was received (early access) with good eyes, then people started complaining about ANOTHER cash grab game with too many transactions and paywalls. It will be the same disaster again, the difference is the mobile game is cheaper to mantain than a full 3D game, and also, easier to keep milking the cow reusing textures and mechanics (like they're currently doing with PvZ2)
I don't want to be pessimistic, but I would also be prepared for EA to announce some "restructuring" or even layoffs in Popcap like they did with Maxis (and if I'm pessimistic indeed, they'll close Popcap). Well, people like Shaun have already gone to other things because they probably knew what was going to happen.
I don't think we're going to see anything related with this franchise in a long time, sadly. That's how EA works, if a game is not giving an abusive profit to them and they can't make people waste money on overpriced pixels then they close the game, the franchise, the studio and then move on to broke another one. They are a toxic company: they don't realise that not giving your developers time to properly finish and polish a game since the beginning is better in the long term than rushing things and pushing them to release incomplete games, like this one, which in the end turns out failing. If BfN had another year of development, the devs would probably have had all the time to add a complete Ops, Multiplayer, characters and more. This is kind of funny because that's exactly what the latest updates were appearing to be.
But you achieve that with a company that is not greedy as EA is. I honestly don't think this is the developers' fault AT ALL because you can see the single player side of this game and is really detailed and properly done, with love and dedication.
About the devs "not listening to the feedback": it's not that they're not listening to it, it's they can't change it because of the higher ups! They can't make changes if all the funding they get from EA is to make costumes to put behind a paywall (aka Rux)
Anyways, PvZ shooters have a lot of people playing even after they stopped updating them (PvZ GW1 has still a playerbase, and basically only 1 friend of mine plays BfN while the rest (of 20) still play Gw2, ON PC!). I think BfN at least has another year of people still playing it (before they complete the characters and everything that is to be done in-game) so that's something positive.
Finally, I think this kind of initiatives serves the purpose of exposing EA to the gamer community (once again) and still showing what the players wanted.
As a lesson to them: don't buy EA games, don't put money on them, don't let them use microtransactions. Vote for them as the worst company (they've already earned that several years, officially) and also, don't trust them. EA needs to disappear so the current industry can improve (it would be a heck of a lesson to other companies that are trying to emulate them)
I hope the best for everyone here and even though I know this won't result in anything fruitful, I will still support you guys as much as I can with my upvotes here, on Reddit and on Twitter.
