EA announces Apex Legends is getting twice as many battle passes and you can no longer earn them in-game

EA and Respawn have announced some major changes to the Apex Legends battle pass which will see seasonal content become far more expensive to keep up with. The community response has been about as negative as you would imagine.

Starting in season 22, there will now be two battle passes every season – one for each split – and each of these passes will now be $9.99. Previously, you’d get a whole season’s battle pass for 950 Apex Coins, the game’s premium currency, and if you completed that pass you’d get enough AC back to get the next one without shelling out any additional cash.

The battle passes still award 1300 Apex Coins apiece, but since the new passes are only available at a price measured in real-world currency, you can no longer spend your AC to get those passes. In one sense, the price of the battle pass is doubling, since there are now twice as many per season, but for truly dedicated fans who’ve been earning AC to buy these things, the price is skyrocketing from a previous tag of ‘free.’

The official announcement goes some distance toward trying to present this as a good thing – there are now fewer junk rewards in each pass, and one premium track battle pass purchase is a bit cheaper than before – but nobody’s really willing to look past the price hike. If you’d like to read comments from players such as “actually the worst thing ever,” “this game is officially dead to me,” and “this is how Apex dies,” you can head over to the game’s subreddit, where these plans are being properly eviscerated. 

There’s a footnote in the blog post that notes “this announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content.” Fans are certainly hopeful that something will change, but this message is a generic one that appears in every single announcement about Apex Legends.

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