If you’ve never run into a Battle Pass in a video game, then you’re lucky. This monetization strategy has run rampant across the industry over the last several years, and has found its way into all sizes of games from the smallest free-to-play mobile efforts to big budget full priced home console releases.
No company is immune against the siren song of the Battle Pass, and it’s probably because their designed to make tons of money by manipulating customers in a whole variety of clever psychological ways. With a careful mind and a guarded wallet, you can navigate this new future without too much trouble — and perhaps yearn alongside me for the simpler monetization strategies of days gone by.
The typical structure for these things is as follows. Battle Passes are almost always limited time offerings, typically coinciding with in-game seasons. The pass itself consists of many tiers of unlockable items. The more you play the game containing the pass, the more items you unlock. Some of these items will be completely free to collect, but most of them require purchasing a “premium version” of the pass.
Battle Passes are time limited, and when combined with the need to pay for their best stuff — they function sort of like a recurring subscription fee. They run anywhere from a few…
