Recently the loot box system has come under fire from many directions from gamers to countries governments. With this many game companies have been banned from producing loot boxes. This means that they need to come up with other ways to make money without causing their fans to be outraged. Fortnite Battle Royale has found a sweet spot for this after following Valves lead with the battle pass.
Battle pass was first introduced in Dota 2 as a way to support the international as the money spent on them was then put into the prize pool for players. This battle pass allowed players to level it up and earn cosmetics. The reason this is so successful is that of the low entry cost of $9.99 (USD) and allows players to gain cosmetics without having to fork out a tonne of cash.
Since then Epic Games have introduced a battle pass that works in a similar way. It costs about 950 V-Bucks ($10 (USD)) and allows players to level up and unlock cosmetics. This paired with the option to straight out buy cosmetics you like has netted $126 Million in February of this year. This shows that the model when done right can make companies more money than they can poke a stick at.
With companies being unable to monetize loot boxes due to gambling restrictions they are likely to look at what else is successful and it would be a bad idea to glance over the success of battle passes.
Players also aren't as likely to find an issue with this model as the passes are low cost and purely cosmetic. As long as developers also include a way to purchase cosmetics separately so players without time to grind can still unlock them, they will be successful.
What do you think? Do you think that more free to play game developers are going to follow this path? Let us know below in the comments, or on our Instagram
