Respawn Entertainment has just announced new details about the changes coming with Apex Legends Season 22, and to say the least, the company has managed to anger a good portion of its community. The main culprit? The Battle Pass overhaul.
You will now have to pay €80 per year to complete all Battle Passes
Electronic Arts is often criticized for its sometimes anti-consumer business practices, and it's a safe bet that the group has pushed Respawn Entertainment to rethink the Apex Legends Battle Pass.
Starting with Season 22, Battle Passes will be available by division, meaning there will be two to discover in 3 months. While they will now last half as long, it will still be easier to complete them, since they will now only include 60 levels, compared to 110 today. More rewards will also be available to collect. You can find all the details on this subject at this address.
So far, it's not dramatic, but what's clearly upsetting players is the removal of the ability to buy them with Apex Coins. From now on, you'll have to pay €9.99 for the Premium and €19.99 for the Premium +. Since there will be two per season, this means that if you want to complete all the battle passes in a year, you'll have to pay around €80 for the Premium and €160 for the Premium +.
Please understand that the Apex Coins to be won for free and via Premium options will no longer be able to be used to obtain the next Battle Passes, which is what many players are doing today. Some initially spent only a few euros and complete all the Battle Passes diligently to afford the next ones without spending a single extra cent.
Part of the community is angry
On Steam, players have made their discontent known with a wave of review bombing. We can indeed notice that more than 10,000 negative opinions have been posted by players since July 8.
On Twitter, below the official post about the upcoming changes in Apex Legends, we can read a rather amusing community note that Electronic Arts surely doesn't like.
While Respawn claims this change is due to “community feedback,” it's clear that it only benefits EA shareholders. Consumers are being forced to spend IRL currency instead of in-game “Apex Coins.”
It remains to be seen whether the players' grumbling will be enough to make Electronic Arts bend the knee, or whether the pill will go down without too many pitfalls.
The new season of Apex Legends is set to be available in early August. In the meantime, you can jump into the arena for free on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.