Apex Legends Victim of Review Bombing for New “Improved” Battle Pass Split into Two Parts

Respawn Entertainment has announced a series of changes to the Apex Legends Battle Passaimed at “improving the gameplay experience and progression goals”, which have sparked numerous controversies on the net it’s a rain of negative reviews on the game’s Steam page.

The most important news is that now there will be two Season Passes with 60 rewards eachinstead of the single one with 110 rewards. So far no problem, except that these “halved” versions in Premium version they will cost 9.99 eurospractically doubling the outlay to get all the seasonal rewardswhich sparked the ire of players on social media and the subsequent review bombing.

Double the passes at double the price, but the same number of rewards

But let’s go step by step. Starting from the Season 22 of Apex Legends, scheduled for next month, the Battle Pass will be divided “into multiple phases”, two in fact, the first at the beginning of the season and the second halfway through. As previously mentioned, each will have 60 rewards, hence the idea that these are “halved” passes compared to the previous ones with 110 rewards.

Here we have to make a brief digression: another change is that Passes will no longer be purchased with Apex Coinsthe game’s premium currency, but directly with real money. This helps to understand the essence of the controversy: despite the smaller number of rewards of the “phased passes”, the price will be practically the same as the old ones. In fact, the cost of the new phased passes will be 9.99 euros for the Premium version (compared to the 950 Apex Coins of the past, 1,000 currently cost 9.99 euros) and 19.99 euros for the Premium+ one.

Consequentially, buying two passes in a single season would cost between 20 and 40 eurosdouble the amount in the past for a practically very similar number of rewards, although it is worth noting that Respawn Entertainment has promised that the items up for grabs will be tastier, given that the prizes least appreciated by the community have been eliminated.

Players’ criticisms

The developers justified these changes to “improve the gameplay experience and progression goals” and ensure “a more accessible and realistic pass“, able to “improve the quality/price ratio“. Evidently the players do not share the same opinion.

The game has been receiving support on Steam since yesterday numerous negative reviewswith the percentage of positive reviews in the last 30 days at 49%, against 77% of the overall one. Even on Reddit and under the post of X of Apex Legends announcing the changes, it is possible to find many negative comments, with many accusing Respawn and EA of having implemented a money grabber strategy very small change.

“You’re essentially paying $10 twice a season instead of being able to continue buying battle passes each season with a single purchase. In what world is that better for players?” Redditor DocEnvy asks rhetorically.

“Wait. Now I’m going to pay $20 a season because of the split? This is not helping players, this is just a shameless money grabber strategy by EA,” mikesweeney says instead.

These were just a few examples of the criticisms leveled by Apex Legends players on social media. What do you think about the issue? Let us know in the comments below.