EA is getting too greedy with their cash cow shooter – now they are reaping the rewards of angry players on Steam

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The shooter Apex Legends (PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, Android, iOS) has been a success story for Electronic Arts in recent years. Financial reports have highlighted how well the shooter is doing. Now EA is increasing the price and wants to charge players more money through the Battle Pass starting in Season 22. Players are reacting with over 74,000 negative reviews on Steam.

This is the change in Apex Legends:

  • For years, it was possible to get the Battle Pass with its cosmetic rewards almost for free in Apex Legends. Because if you completed a Battle Pass, you got enough in-game currency, Apex Coins, to buy the next one.
  • However, EA announced a change to the Season Pass a few weeks ago: Starting with the launch of Season 22 on August 6, there will be 2 Battle Passes per season, both of which can only be purchased with real money, but offer better rewards and require less time
  • In practice, this means that starting August 6, players will have to spend €20 per season to be able to play 2 Battle Passes, whereas in the past, at least frequent players did not have to spend any money at all.

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    Apex Legends receives more than 71,400 negative reviews on Steam

    This is the reaction now: Apex Legends players are outraged by the change and are expressing their anger to an extreme extent via Steam reviews:

  • We already reported on July 11 that the first negative reviews were coming in
  • In the meantime, this has turned into an avalanche of bad reviews: In the recent reviews, Apex Legends now has “Extremely Negative” – only 7% of 80,037 reviews are positive.

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    In the screenshot shared on Reddit, the tags on Steam were also adjusted to “rreativ”.

    Players complain, but most keep playing

    What’s the catch with protesting? Although the Steam reviews have plummeted, the number of players remains largely stable.

    As you can see from the Steam charts, player counts continue to peak at around 215,000 players per day. This is slightly lower than before the announcement, but within the normal fluctuations of Apex Legends: the longer a season goes on, the lower the player count gets.

    The negative Steam reviews and the announcement to show EA and stop with Apex Legends are not currently reflected in the player numbers.

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    Does the protest achieve anything? Rumors suggest that EA plans to roll back the changes before they go live, but these are currently just rumors circulating on Twitter.

    Battle passes have always been viewed critically by parts of the community in live service games. Because what seems so nice and player-friendly at first glance brings with it certain obligations and actually has little to do with play: Some micro-transactions in new MMOs border on self-enslavement

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