Apex Legends can’t seem to catch a break. The game has been plagued with a pair of high-profile issues for the last few weeks.
First up, earlier this week, the hero shooter’s developer, Respawn Entertainment, announced it was retooling the game’s battle pass. For season 22 and beyond, the battle pass will now be split into two halves, with 60 levels for each half. Additionally, players will no longer be able to purchase a battle pass with AC or Apex’s in-game currency. “The decision to move from AC to real world currency is not one that we made lightly, but it does allow us to decrease the price of Premium+ for our community,” the announcement read.
Players responded negatively to the changes, accusing Respawn and publisher EA of nickel-and-diming its customers. Respawn touts that the new system is a way to “increase value” for players. But eliminating the ability to pay for the battle pass with currency earned in-game (previously, players could earn enough coins by completing the battle pass progression to purchase another one without spending more real money) is seen by many as a way for the studio to squeeze more money out of a dwindling player base. The backlash progressed to the point where players began review-bombing the game on Steam, taking its former, mostly positive rating down to mostly negative.
On the esports side, Apex Legends suffered another embarrassment as players participating in the Apex Legends Global Series tournament reported incorrect payments to their accounts. One player received $100,000 in their account after only a few days of play. Other players reported similar erroneous payments totaling either too much or too little. The tournament’s organizer, ESL Faceit, took responsibility, calling it a “systems error” that resulted in incorrect payments. In a statement to Polygon a spokesperson for the tournament wrote, “As the partner responsible for prize fulfillment, we’re working to quickly resolve this issue and ensure that all players receive the correct prize payouts.”
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