I Hate Battle Passes: An Overwatch 2 Case Study

mar 12 2023

I have a deep, perfectly rational disgust for subscription services. Anything that is rent to own instead of a one-time purchase pisses me off, and I would rather spend $60 on a program once than pay $4.99 a month to use it. Unfortunately, this method of monetization is pretty common in gaming. I finally caved and bought my first video game subscription in 2021, for FFXIV, but I've remained pretty stubborn and discerning about what I buy subscriptions for. There's only one thing I hate more than a subscription: a battle pass.

Battle passes, sometimes called season passes, are a form of monetization in video games that were inspired by the season pass ticketing system in sports. There's usually a free track and a paid track, and players gradually earn rewards over a portion of time by playing the game and completing challenges. This system was popularized by Fortnite (Epic Games, 2018) and gradually replaced subscription fees and lootboxes. The first real battle pass system began with Dota 2 (Valve) in 2013, when they introduced a new item, "The Compendium," to pay for their major esports tournament. The money players spent on the Compendium was added to the prize pool for the tournament, and in return gave players extra cosmetic items and other small benefits like EXP gains. This system was massively profitable and would return every year for their annual tournament.

Fortnite then took this system and cranked it up to 100. They conceptualized the "season" driven release system, which had players buy a battle pass and then attempt to "complete" the pass for all the rewards over a couple months. Fortnite also introduced the concept of buying the season pass with in-game currency instead of directly with real money. At first, the season pass seemed like an attractive alternative to lootboxes, which had been the primary form of microtransactions at the time. Criticisms of lootboxes drew the attention of governmental agencies, which were moving in the direction of deciding lootboxes were essentially gambling and placing restrictions on them. Some people preferred battle passes, because at least a battle pass shows you every item you can get ahead of time so you can decide whether or not it's worth your money.

A Games Industry article discussing battle passes talks about how important it is for business not to view players who choose not to buy the pass as "freeloaders" or "potential customers waiting to be converted." It says that these free players bring "immense value" to the game by populating the game and thus bringing queue times down, as well as providing "social benefits" by way of playing with their friends. Punishing those players for not buying the pass will make them stop playing, and might push them to take that value to a competitor's game. A common archetype of gamer is the "whale," aka a player who can spend huge amounts of money on the game, whether that be through cosmetics or pay to win mechanics. But this article cautions businesses not to give up on "time whales," who are overwhelmingly free to play players. As another article on the Deconstructor of Fun blog puts it: "When considering Passes, it's important to note that they are not exclusively a monetization feature. The pass is primarily [a] retention and an engagement mechanism. So it must provide the right incentives to engage them in fun activities and keep them interested in the rewards."

But most battle passes simply don't treat battle passes as an engagement feature, or as anything other than a monetization feature. It's all about incentivizing people to buy the pass as a mandatory feature and then be forced to spend months grinding for all the rewards so your money feels well spent. As a comment on a Gamespot article about battle passes puts it, "Before BP the player had a choice: grind or pay money. With BP you have to do both. The only thing I like about BP is non random reward nature. But the daily grind is mind numbing." I agree wholeheartedly. There's something so sinister about paying for the opportunity to grind! It's even worse when the rewards for grinding simply don't feel worth it.

There's no better case study of what happens when a company botches a battle pass for the sake of profits than Blizzard's Overwatch 2 (2022). The original game, Overwatch (2016) was priced at $40 for the base game, but could also be purchased for $60 for the Game of the Year/Origins edition, which included several exclusive skins. The game also had lootbox microtransactions, and made $1 billion from lootboxes alone as of 2019. When they released Overwatch 2, they moved to a free-to-play game with a battle pass system and cosmetics purchasable with microtransactions (and no lootboxes). In the last three months of 2022 alone, Overwatch 2 earned over $100 million from combined battle passes and shop sales!

Clearly, people are buying it. So what's the problem here? People bought it, but they weren't happy with it. The battle pass and new monetization system through credits and the shop quickly became even less popular than lootboxes.

You know how bad your system has to be for people to miss gambling?!

Other battle passes, like Fortnite's, offer ways to earn credits via the battle pass, meaning you can essentially get the next pass for free if you completely the current battle pass. Overwatch 2's battle pass did not give you any way to earn credits. Instead, you got credits for completing weekly challenges... but you got an abysmally low amount, 60 credits a week. Someone on the Overwatch 2 forum did the math, and to buy one legendary skin you would have to grind every day for eight months!

So if you actually want skins, buying the battle pass is the more attractive option. But what does a $10 battle pass give you?

Overwatch 2 added two new forms of unlockable cosmetic content, souvenirs and weapon charms. They weren't received well, and were largely considered padding for the battle pass. Weapon charms are near useless in a first person game, especially when some heroes are melee heroes. The game was not designed with the weapon charms in mind, which means that the charms fit awkwardly on a lot of heroes and either can't be seen or look out of place. Souvenirs have your character do a short animation and display some kind of charm, which also wasn't very well received because it takes up an (already limited) emote slot. The animations for each charm are reused, not unique, and the charms range from random and cute (a kitsune, a D.va inspired keychain) to random and odd-looking (a giant cartoon heart and barbells). Other existing cosmetics like sprays and voicelines make up the majority of the battle pass, which simply don't feel valuable enough to purchase or grind for. You're basically buying the battle pass for a couple of skins, that you still have to grind and complete the battle pass for.

They already had to majorly redesign the battle pass after how poorly revieved it was at launch. Now you can earn credits from the battle pass; enough to earn one (1) legendary skin per season... provided you grind every day to complete the battle pass, of course!

Another thing that was revieved very poorly was the infamously greedy shop system. At launch, it would cost you $10,000 to buy every old cosmetic. New skins (and old skins) were only purchasable in pricey bundles that were crammed full of garbage filler like souvenirs and voice lines, so that Blizzard could justify pricing them at $20 for a "bundle"... while knowing most people were only buying the bundle for a single skin. To make matters worse, Blizzard were offering "discounts" on bundles that had items that were not purchasable on their own... which is actually illegal in some countries! They quickly stopped doing this, but it's crazy to me that they thought they would be able to get away with it in the first place!

At first, you could only buy legendary skins if they randomly rotated into your weekly "shop" selection, either alone or in a bundle. Yeah, this sucks too, and was so widely hated they changed it so that all legendary skins can be bought at any time... but only with legacy credits, aka credits that transferred over from the first Overwatch game. Even now, some popular event skins are still locked and can only be bought if they get put into your shop randomly, and I'm not sure that their criteria is for locked skins versus unlocked skins that can be purchased. Also, this could be my imagination, but I'm pretty sure the "For you" shop is more likely to show you bundles and skins for heroes you play more often. I play primarily D.va, Moira, and Mercy, and those are the three characters that show up the most in my shop.

Scummy monetization isn't new to Overwatch 2, though. The first game also had infamously stingy lootboxes on launch, with horrible drop rates for legendary skins and no bad luck/duplicate protections, as well as no skins that could be earned from gameplay. Throughout the game's history, since people kept complaining (as well as Blizard being hit with potential legal threat from countries like Germany restricting lootbox sales under gambling laws), duplicate prevention and better rates were gradually implemented over time. The game also implemented in-game event "challenges," where a certain number of matches won would net you various cosmetic awards like icons, sprays, and skins. By the time the game was shut down, people were generally pretty happy with its improved monetization.

I suspect the same trajectory will occur to Overwatch 2. Blizzard's monetization system seems to be to launch the game with the greediest monetization they can possibly conceive, and then gradually pull back on the parts that cause the most vocal outcry. I have no doubt they knew that their monetization at launch was not sustainable. They probably planned on having to adjust after system launch, so they launched with the greediest system possible. Then, when they inevitably have to adjust prices, they end up looking generous, while still making a shit ton of money.

So what's the conclusion here? What do we do about this? My point is that players need to vocally express their displeasure with battle passes, and refuse to buy them. The only reason Blizzard adjusted their prices and system was because people would not shut up about hating them and refusing to buy skins! These companies will never change out of the goodness of their hearts, and honestly rarely even change due to public outcry. The only way to get them to change is to tangibly hit their wallets.

I saw a lot of Overwatch 2 players trying to reason with Blizzard by saying, "I would buy more skins if they were cheaper!" While I get the mindset behind saying this, I just have to tell you: they don't care! I don't doubt that Blizzard could actually probably make the same amount of money, if not more, with cheaper and less predatory systems of monetization. But they do not care about the potential profit that could be made, only about the profit they're currently making. The only solution is simply not to buy anything. No battle pass, no bundles, no skins, no credits. And if that makes the game less enjoyable to you... stop playing! It's okay to step away from the game and play one of the billion other games out there. You can come back when (if) things change for the better.

I also see a lot of people continuing to purchase battle passes and credits under the argument that "Game devs deserve to get paid." Again, I see where this is coming from, but it's so misguided! Game developers are not musicians; they don't get paid by the amount of copies sold. They're either company workers with an annual salary or they're contracted and paid a flat fee for their work. The employees at Blizzard literally do not see a single penny from the battle pass sales, except in the ephemeral sense that more money for Blizzard means they can pay their employees more. In a perfect world, this would be what happens, and in that case, yeah, I wouldn't really care about $10 battle passes and $20 skin bundles. But in reality, all that money goes to the higher ups and the workers stay underpaid and overworked.

Despite record profits, the company will do anything to cut corners and justify paying their employees less. Just look at Blizzard's recent and highly unpopular Return to Office policy! It essentially acts as a pay decrease for employees who 1) were hired remotely with the expectation that they didn't have to relocate or 2) now have to pay for gas and parking to get to the office every day. Blizzard employees were essentially told to either return to the office or be fired, despite the Overwatch team proving they can produce and ship a highly popular game remotely!

There's really only one thing left to say after that. Put your money where your mouth is, support game company unions, and don't buy battle passes!