On September 6th, Temtem, a colorful Pokémon-style MMO, celebrated its release. Criticism followed shortly after, affecting the game’s Battle Pass. Now the developers are commenting on the situation.
What’s the matter? Temtem is a new Pokémon-themed MMO that left Early Access on September 6th and is officially available on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series and the Switch.
Upon release, some players were surprised to see that Temtem has a Battle Pass. The developers of the monster collecting game promptly received a lot of criticism.
Now community manager Tsukki commented on the criticism on the game’s official Discord server.
If you want to have a better impression of which game it is, we include the launch trailer of the Pokémon MMO here:
Temtem-1.0 Launch Trailer
Developers comment on the criticism of the Battle Pass
What do the developers say about the criticism? In the Discord post, Community Manager Tsukki writes that the team is aware of how controversial Batte Pass is and that the decision caused a lot of unrest in the community.
Tsukki then explains that the developers have noticed that a call for “review bombing” has taken place and that the effects are already being felt.
She also says that the team doesn’t want the Battle Pass topic to distract from the fact that 5 years of work and a lot of effort went into the project.
We know there have been calls for criticism of the game and the impact of this decision is being felt.
This product is “bombarded” with bad reviews, so to speak. The aim of such an action is often to damage the sale or popularity of the product concerned.
Battle Pass is designed to help Temtem with longevity
Why is there a Battle Pass in Temtem? In the statement on Discord, Tsukki also explains why there is a Battle Pass in Temtem at all. According to her, this was not added to the game out of greed, but was aimed at enabling the MMO to live a long life.
Our intention with monetization isn’t to be greedy, but rather to ensure that Temtem has a long life and is well preserved.
In addition, the Battle Pass does not contain any pay-to-win content and is purely cosmetic. On top of that, the Battle Pass contains enough units of in-game currency to get the next Battle Pass for free.
According to her, future Battle Passes will follow the same principle, giving players an “endless loop of free Battle Passes”.
Our intent has always been to avoid pay-to-win and make each premium item as optional as possible. Anything paid for in Temtem is cosmetic only. We set it up so that buying one Battle Pass gives you enough currency to buy the next one for free, and that’s an endless loop of free Battle Passes.
Does the Battle Pass affect other content? In the post on Discord, Tsukki emphasizes that the Battle Pass was specially created by another team. This ensured that neither time nor resources had to be taken away from the actual development of the game.
All of this content was created as an extra by a new team, so it didn’t take time or resources away from development.
Finally, Tsukki says she understands if someone doesn’t want to buy Temtem or the Battle Pass right now or want to support the dev studio. However, she asks that you refrain from attacking or harassing the team or the rest of the community because of the topic.
If you want to read Tsukki’s original text in English, we include a screenshot of the statement here:
Temtem review bombing shows up on Steam
Are we seeing the review bombing? Looking at the user reviews on Steam, we can definitely see that Temtem received negative reviews based on the Battle Pass:
So there are definitely players who rate the game negatively on Steam and give the Battle Pass as the reason. Looking at the average rating, Temtem has definitely taken a few hits.
While the Pokémon MMO still had 85% positive reviews in the Early Access phase without the Battle Pass, only 58% of the reviews in the last 30 days – which also included the release and introduction of the Battle Pass – are positive . We are currently seeing a similar development with Path of Exile, where the positive reviews have fallen from a strong 87% to a catastrophic 26%.
What do you say about the Battle Pass in Temtem? In your opinion, is it a reason to rate the game negatively or even not to buy it in the first place? What do you think of Battle Passes in games in general? Write it to us here on MeinMMO in the comments!
If you’re not one of those players who are put off by a Battle Pass and instead enjoy Temtem, you might be interested in our tier list of the best monsters:
The best Temtem in the ranking – Tier List