Apex Legends has announced a Battle Pass update that reverts some pricing features that caused community outcry while the dev team also responded to questions about the state of the game and the new Collection Event. With the increased Price Points of the monetisation in-game and the lack of meaningful additional content, loyal Apex Legends players have taken to social media platforms such as Reddit threads to voice their frustration at what appears to be a last-ditch money grab fueled by the bottom-line hungry EA.
Battle Pass Updates
The Apex Legends team received major backlash after the Battle Pass became monetised so it would force players to repay for the Battle Pass every season, rather than the old system where Apex Coins were used and were earnable through the Battle Pass itself if progressed enough. This would allow players to avoid the recurring payment for the Battle Pass if the game was played sufficiently by the user, and felt like a reward for loyalty to the game for the player base.
The dev team have announced their decision to backtrack from this system and payment method. Overall the change felt like a last cash grab for a dwindling player base and game falling out of the FPS spotlight, and with the parent company being EA who are notorious for their less than favourable price setting and transactional paywalls, the player base was understandably upset.
It's bigger and better than ever.
Hop into the chaos this weekend with BIG TDM 🙌 pic.twitter.com/jcZXwrk8VL
— Apex Legends (@PlayApex) July 27, 2024
The fact that the dev team have had to instantly backtrack their decision and make both a Reddit post and an official post on their website disseminated through their social channels demonstrates the power players still have over the game experience. Putting a solid price point on the Battle Pass would have made the game even more inaccessible, and it makes the player base wonder whether the so-called improvements the Battle Pass is set to undertake is another cash grab. The active window of each Battle Pass will become shorter, meaning more money will be in the pocket of Respawn and EA as players who want to collect cosmetics will have more opportunities to open their wallets to Apex.
The Ultimate Battle Pass with the new Legendary Variant Cosmetics is still set to be behind a paywall as well. For all the backtracking Respawn Devs did, this still reeks of a dev team that is being pressured into monetising their audience more frequently and is still chasing the profit margin expectations of yesteryear when Apex Legends was still the most popular FPS game around. With other shooters overtaking Apex comprehensively, trying to cash grab the audience that stayed with exclusive paywall content even in the Battle Pass isn’t just despicable, but overall disappointing.
While the dev team also talk about price, they’re setting the most expensive Battle Pass to give a price increase to the Battle Pass experience irrespective of what region you play from. It’s a PR stunt that aims to backtrack on mistakes the dev team made while also hiking up the price of the product in a game that is infested with cheaters and lacks additional content.
Starting with Season 22, we’re evolving the Apex Legends Battle Pass to improve your experience and progression goals.
Read on to learn everything to know about the upcoming changes or check out the infographic below to learn more.
📃: https://t.co/kg5NhlFfVq pic.twitter.com/i516ktP9ma
— Apex Legends (@PlayApex) July 8, 2024
Void Reckoning Event
Another LTM, Milestone Event items and collection event appear in Apex Legends. Apex loves its’ collection events and it’s probably one of the best ways to milk more money out of its rapidly decreasing player base. At least the new TDM will feel like some meaningful content is being added to the game, but at the end of the day, it’s Apex Legends and another iteration of a Team Deathmatch mode. While it may be enjoyable and may serve as a good warmup or practice mode, it certainly isn’t some revolutionary new gameplay mode like it was on launch, and the ideas have been recycled over and over again so it won’t feel as fresh.
The skins and cosmetics surrounding the event are fairly cool but don’t look like must-buys, and while I can understand the design team hasn’t just recoloured a skin variant and branded it as new content, it feels hollow if the gameplay side Apex doesn’t get a much-needed facelift or some non-artificial life injected back into it.
When asked about the other concerns Apex has outside of the new updates mentioned, Game Director Steven Ferreira mentioned a commitment to transparency about what the dev team is working on, and more long-term solutions to problems that are identified over what he referred to as short-term “band-aid solutions”.
While understandable, he didn’t mention what the dev team were working on, and it feels like it could be another platitude to try and placate the consumers after the PR disaster the Battle Pass brought. In terms of a better anti-cheat, more meaningful content and a better game experience, both the interviewer and Ferreira didn’t mention any of this explicitly which makes this feel like a staged PR message to players than an interview with hard-hitting questions or journalistic integrity.
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