Apex Legends takes the CoD BlackCell route and fans are livid

It's fair to say that Apex Legends has come a long way in its customisation game since its first battle pass was donned by an ugly Havoc weapon camo at Tier 100. Since then, we've had new features like skydive trials, gun buddies, emotes, skins, and more reactive camos than we can think of.

As this has unfortunately left the Battle Pass a bit exhausted as we edge towards Season 22, Respawn Entertainment is taking a leaf out of the Call of Duty BlackCell approach and is making a premium plus pass worth $40 a season. Unsurprisingly, fans are pretty miffed.

Apex Legends' Premium+ Battle Pass goes down like a lead balloon

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Call of Duty introduced a third tier to its battle pass last year with BlackCell, and despite major pushback from the vocal majority, the pass is consistently in the Top 10 best-selling items on Steam as it changes every two months.

Respawn has now taken this route and has revealed a Premium+ tier costing $20 per half-season. This involves completely scrapping the old system with 110 tiers, splitting it into two 60-tier passes every mid-split update.

But fans have been quick on the trigger to fire criticism at the devs, pointing out some flawed changes.

"Changing how Battle Pass Works' is a very neutral way of saying 'doubling price'," one fan said on Reddit. "Instead of a pass working for a full season, they're making the battle pass work for only 1 part of each season," they added.

Others took aim at the subscription no longer accepting in-game currency to purchase and instead only being able to be bought with cash. This leaves players with 6,100 CP that cannot go towards the next pass and must be plundered into the store instead. Not so coincidentally, this is also BlackCell's biggest complaint.

"I’ve played 20 seasons on a one-time purchase of $10," one fan pointed out in an all-to-familiar story of players using the pass' AC to save up for the next one.

"I will not buy another pass again and will probably eventually stop entirely. I have over 2000 hrs in apex. It truly seems like a last-ditch effort to extract as much out of whales as possible before killing the game," they added.

Apex Legends players have been dropping like flies lately, with its lowest population on Steam in three years. It doesn't seem like the best time to release a new and controversial battle pass system, and it looks like this overhaul is already motivating even more players to move away.