The old saying is, "You get what you pay for," but in the case of the free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes, some players no longer believe that's true. A recent change in the game's pricing structure for in-game items has a ton of players upset that the balance has shifted to players who have a lot of money to spend.

The price changes were announced on Monday. For those of you who don't play the EA-published game, the gist of the changes is that a lot of in-game items like weapons and other upgrades now cost more Valor Points (points that earned while playing the game). At the same time, it's now cheaper to buy upgrades to weapons via Battlefunds (which you pay real money for). Once more, some items purchased with Valor Points can now only be "rented" for one to three days while they can be made permanent using Battlefunds.

Does that mean bad things are happening? According to the massive forum message from a number of players, the answer is "Yes." They feel that EA is going for a money grab while hurting players who just want to play the game and upgrade their characters for free. Will this change affect the game's future? That's currently unknown. In August EA announced it had registered 1.5 million players for Battlefield Heroes after its official launch last June. it was suggested (but never actually confirmed by EA) that the game could have already earned $30 million from in-game item revenue in just its first two months.

[Via Joystiq]