Sometimes, you have to wonder why certain video game companies believe a “good idea” is actually a “good idea. You might recall that earlier in the month, EA revealed that they were going to be changing the battle passes for Apex Legends. Specifically, they were going to do two tiers of battle passes, then make it so that you couldn’t get the pass via the in-game currency. Meaning that if you wanted to get the new content via the premium pass, you had to pay for it, no matter what. As we noted when we posted about this initially, fan outcry could’ve caused EA to back off. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.
Many gamers rightfully saw this as a kind of “money power play” to ensure that people were paying in some way to play the free title, and so EA released a statement saying they were going to backtrack a bit and ensure you could get the passes with Apex Coins.
“You’ve spoken, and we’ve listened. With the release of Season 22 we will restore the ability to get the Premium Battle Pass for 950 Apex Coins. We recognize that we could have handled the Battle Pass changes better-that’s on us. You’ll be able to earn enough Apex Coins via the Battle Pass to get future passes,”
Here’s the full statement if you want to read it:
EA went on to note that they’re focused on making Apex Legendsas great as possible for gamers and working on the things that players have noted needing fixing for a while:
“Moving forward, we recognize that we need to be more timely, transparent, and consistent in our communications with you. Your priorities are our priorities: cheaters, game stability, and quality of life updates are top of mind. We need to get better and it’s why we’re acknowledging them here.”
While it’s nice to hear EA say those things, it remains to be said if they actually mean them. They’re only making this statement because the fans backlashed on their money plans, and they had to say something to save face and not lose more money.
It also should be noted that EA has been focused recently on trying to get more money from their titles, and making more live service games to get that money over a longer period of time. This was one example of them trying to do that.
We’ll have to wait and see whether EA tries to pull this off with another title of theirs.
