There is trouble at Apex Legends: EA is changing the battle pass model. Instead of $0 per season, players will now have to pay $20 for the battle pass. This does not sit well with them. Even players with 3,000 hours in the shooter are punishing Apex Legends with negative reviews on Steam, but a announced boycott seems to be absent.
This is the problem: Yesterday on MeinMMO, we reported on the changes to the battle pass in Apex Legends:
- So far, it has been the case that frequent players could effectively acquire the battle pass in Apex Legends for free using the currency AC, as they earned new currency for the next battle pass while playing through the current one.
- Now, however, the battle pass can only be purchased with real money.
- In addition, there are now two of the passes, but with easier-to-achieve rewards.
In practice, this means: While frequent players previously spent $0 per season to obtain and play the battle pass, they will soon have to pay $20 to stay at the same level.
Thousands of negative reviews flood in for Apex Legends on Steam
This is the impact: On reddit and Twitter, many players of Apex Legends have expressed their dissatisfaction.
As a result of the now-typical “review bombing” on Steam, recent reviews have collapsed to “Mostly Negative”:
- On July 8, 479 negative reviews came in.
- On July 9, there were 1,448 negative reviews – about 10 times more than on a normal day.
- On July 10, 3,262 negative reviews came in.
In the reviews, people write specifically:
- “Very good battle pass update, makes my uninstall button spin,” writes a player with 1,280 hours on Steam.
- “It’s a hard no from me to a two-battlepass-and-only-cash meta,” writes someone who has spent 3,093 hours on Apex Legends on Steam.
- A player with 3,000 hours even states: “GARBO GAME” – meaning “garbage game.”
Player calls for protest but continues to play
Are people following through with the protest? Not really. It is not measurable or really evident yet.
When comparing player numbers on Steam, no measurable decline that goes beyond normal fluctuations is visible:
- On July 7 (before the trouble), 148,000 people were logged in at 2 PM.
- On July 8, there were 151,000 people on Steam at 2 PM.
- On July 9, it was 149,000 people.
Thus, Apex Legends remains one of the largest shooters on Steam and one of the top 10 games overall. Currently, it ranks in 10th place in the Steam charts behind the two new games The First Descendant and Once Human.
Even one of the Steam reviewers, who had spent 3,087 hours in the game when he vented his frustration, has spent another 6 hours in the shooter since the review.
It seems to be one of those cases where people announce that they will stop playing Apex Legends immediately and never play it again, but these effects are not yet measurable or reflected in reality. It will certainly be observed in the coming days how many players actually follow through with the protest. At the moment, it doesn’t look like EA is really feeling the community’s anger: Players threaten to delete Apex Legends from their hard drives because EA has “improved” the battle pass.
