Apex Legends has, over the years, been a bit of a hotbed for EA’s penchant for greed. In the past, Apex Legends has faced controversy over numerous collections and cosmetics hidden behind notably expensive microtransactions. . Now, EA’s reworking of the battle pass has landed the game in unusually hot waters.
It was recently announced that Apex Legends would be adjusting the delivery of its battle pass. Effectively, beginning with the upcoming 22nd season, battle passes will be split into halves and players have to pay the price of a regular season for half of one now. The justification from EA and Respawn was that players would receive more content by paying for each of the splits, but it seems that the publisher—which has repeatedly ranked at the top of the world’s worst companies—is just trying to squeeze its community for more money. The community notes on the X (formerly known as Twitter) post announcing the change angrily insist that this move “is only profitable for EA Shareholders.”
In short, the news has hardly gone over well, and if you check out Apex Legends’ Steam page right now, its recent reviews have fallen to “Overwhelmingly Negative,” a distinction reserved for either the absolute worst games or the targets of Steam review bombings. The latter happens to be the case here.
As you can imagine, most of the criticisms being levied at Apex Legends in its Steam reviews chiefly take issue with the battle pass changes, not the gameplay itself. One review reads, “Now with the new battle pass system, I’m deleting the game, as well as most players, bye!” Another cuts right to the point, reading, “Ea as usual destroying a fun game with a ridiculous amount of over monetization. Classic greedy EA.”
Per the last comment, a lot of folks don’t seem all that surprised that EA, a company known for its numerous microtransaction-riddled titles, might try a move like this. “EA EA EA why do u have to destroy every game u create at some point,” reads one disgruntled review whose writer seems to have been in this position before. The review that cuts the deepest simply says, “2 10 dollar battle passes per season. Titanfall died for this slop.”
The game’s overall rating is still holding at “Mostly Positive.” Folks on Apex Legends’ subreddit think that as well-intentioned a move as it is to review bomb, and subsequently ward players away from what they perceive to be a money pit, they’d be “shocked if this made any difference at all.” Some are a bit more optimistic, but only if they’re able to realistically hurt the publisher’s wallet by the end of the next season, which begins next month. In the meantime, a whole slew of players are giving up on Apex Legends, while others wonder if they’re really ready to throw in the towel on a game they’ve loved for years.
Despite the backlash, Respawn and EA haven’t said a thing in response to the Apex Legends community. If either is considering rolling back the changes, it hasn’t betrayed that in any communications. In light of that, Kotaku has reached out for comment, though have yet to hear back.
