Every three months, a games studio somewhere releases a new battle pass, and every three months millions of adults hand over £9.99 for the right to do homework in their spare time.
The battle pass is a simple idea. You pay for a list of chores. If you finish the chores, you get a hat. If you don’t, the hat goes away forever, and so does the money. It is the only product in history designed to make you feel guilty about something you bought for fun.
Whether you play Fortnite, Call of Duty, Apex Legends or Rocket League, the season notes read roughly the same. So here they are, the honest version. They are written for an invented shooter, Siegefall: Eternal, from the invented Mudsworth Interactive, because the real studios have lawyers and the lawyers have battle passes too. My notes are in bold, because nobody else is taking any.
New this season
- 100 new tiers of rewards, including 14 weapon skins, 9 character outfits and 31 “sprays”.
- A new premium track, the Elite Pass, for players who want “even more value”.
- A limited-time event, “Operation Frostfall”, available for 11 days only.
Fourteen skins for the same rifle. The rifle still misses. It now misses in purple.
The Elite Pass is the battle pass for people who have already paid for the battle pass. It exists because enough of them said yes last time.
Progression changes
- Experience needed per tier increased by 18% “to make rewards feel more meaningful”.
- Daily challenges now reset at 4am instead of midnight.
- Tier skips can now be bought in bundles of 25 for £16.99.
Meaningful, in this sentence, means slower. Slower means you are more likely to reach the end of the season at tier 71 and feel the panic. The panic is the product. Tier skips are how you buy your way out of the panic the studio built.
The 4am reset is a gift for people who were going to bed. Now they know there is still time.
A word from the studio
“At Mudsworth Interactive, we believe every player deserves a reason to log in every single day. Season 14 gives them over a hundred,” said an invented head of live operations. “We are proud to offer players more choice than ever about how much they want to spend.”
A reason to log in every single day is what a parole officer gives you. More choice about how much to spend is the studio confirming that not spending was never one of the choices.
Known issues
- Some players may experience a feeling that they have done this before.
- Rewards from Season 13 may appear in the Season 14 store at a new price.
- Players who stop playing for a week may be shown a message reading “Your squad misses you”.
Your squad does not miss you. Your squad is four strangers called xXGhostXx. What misses you is the retention dashboard. It has a graph, and you are the dip in it.
What it actually costs
Here is the maths the patch notes leave out. The pass is £9.99. Finishing it on time takes about 80 hours. If you are busy, the tier skips are another £16.99, maybe two bundles. Then there is the Elite Pass, the event bundle and the skin you only noticed because a stranger was wearing it while beating you.
Call it £45 a season, four seasons a year, for a game that was advertised as free. Free is the most expensive word in gaming. It means the price is still coming, and it has your card details.
None of this is hidden. It is all in the patch notes, in bullet points, in a cheerful font. That is the clever bit. Nobody needs to trick you. They just need you to believe you will be different this season.
You won’t. You will buy the pass on day one, play hard for a fortnight, fall behind in week five and spend the final weekend grinding like it is exam season. You will reach tier 100 at 11:40pm on the last night and unlock a gold rifle that nobody will see, because by then everyone has moved on to Season 15.