Apex Legends’ Steam Review Score Plummets In The Wake Of New Battle Pass Changes

Apex Legends‘ Steam page has been inundated with negative user reviews following the announcement that Season 22 will feature two battle passes. Prior to the July 8 announcement, the game was earning roughly 150 to 300 negative user reviews (and a similar amount of positive user reviews) daily. But in the days following the announcement of the battle pass changes, the game has earned a total of 35,035 negative reviews, dropping its score for the month of July to “overwhelmingly negative.” Only 1,997 of the user reviews posted since July 8 are positive.

Starting with Season 1: Wild Frontier (which launched in March 2019), Apex’s battle passes have stuck to an unchanging recipe. Each season has featured a new battle pass with 110 levels of cosmetics and in-game currency for players to unlock after purchase. Previously, Apex’s seasonal battle passes cost 950 Apex Coins ($9.50 USD) each, though players could spend 2,800 AC ($28 USD) to automatically unlock the first 25 levels of the battle pass. But starting in Season 22, Respawn will be releasing two 60-level battle passes per season, with the first battle pass launching alongside the new season, and the second arriving at the season’s midpoint.

Additionally, there’s been a price change: Each battle pass will now cost $10 USD ($20 USD for the upgraded version), and battle passes will no longer be available to purchase with Apex Coins, a change that players are especially displeased with. Previously, each battle pass included enough Apex Coins to purchase the next season’s battle pass, meaning that once players purchased and completed a single battle pass, the next season’s pass would effectively be available for free, provided they didn’t spend their Apex Coins on something else.

With the new changes to the battle-pass system, players who wish to complete an entire season’s worth of battle-pass content will be paying over twice as much per season as they previously were, will not be able to use Apex Coins to obtain the battle pass for free, and will be faced with 120 levels of content to unlock instead of 110. The mid-season split also means there will be less time to unlock those rewards. Each season of Apex Legends lasts roughly three months, and it’s common for players to wait until the end of the season to finish grinding out the XP needed to finish their battle pass. Now, players who want to get their money’s worth and stay up-to-date with the game’s cosmetics will need to ensure they’ve unlocked all 60 levels of each battle pass every month-and-a-half.

“​​Buying the battle pass for free with the money from older ones is literally the only thing that makes you feel rewarded as an older player and they removed that from us,” reads one negative review from a player who has spent over 1,500 hours playing the game.

In total, Apex has earned 879,014 user reviews in its lifetime, and the game currently holds a “mostly positive” overall rating, with 73% of user reviews giving the game a thumbs up. Respawn has yet to comment on player feedback regarding the new battle-pass system, but the studio did unveil a new collection of premium cosmetics via the game’s social media channels on July 18.