Early this year, Apex Legends had a surprise launch that took the multiplayer shooter community by storm. The game combined the free-to-play battle royale structure of Fortnite with the team-based hero shooter dressing of Overwatch and added a few multiplayer-centric quality of life improvements that impressed fans of both genres.
The formula seemed to work. Apex Legends picked up a lot of momentum out of the gate and garnered a lot of acclaim. Adding the hero shooter flavor gave many of folks who watched from the fringes of the battle royale genre a way in.
After a little while, though, things took a bit of turn and the player count dropped off. Apex Legends adopted Fortnite’s Seasonal Battle Pass monetization structure and the game had enough continuous players to make it worthwhile. While the first season didn’t gain as much financial steam for the game as the team wanted, Apex Legends developer Respawn hoped to turn things around with a much more promising season 2.
With season 2 now ongoing, Respawn has had a tough time finding monetization strategies that keep players happy and encourage them to spend money in the free-to-play game.
The Iron Crown Problem
Problems began for Apex Legends at the beginning of their recent Iron Crown event. The event features a plethora of rewards for players which includes 24 event-specific skins. As players play through the event, they have the opportunity to unlock two loot boxes, each of which has a chance at giving them a skin at random. If players don't get the skin they want, they can buy additional loot boxes which will give them more random chances to obtain it.
These additional loot boxes cost $7 a piece. Respawn promised players that the loot boxes would not include any duplicates, which means that players don't need to worry about getting nothing for their money, something that Blizzard still has issues with in Overwatch. For players to unlock all of the skins, or for players who want a specific skin and have a run of back luck, the price for the entire collection of Iron Crown skins is about $150. Players see this as predatory and unfair because it means no guarantee that their money will go to something they actually want unless they pony up a stiff price.
Respawn heard the player concern and decided to respond. In a blog post, the Apex Legends developer promised to do better in the future, saying they "missed the mark." They offered players an alternative in that they would sell the skins on a rotating basis for $18 a piece so players could buy exactly the skin they want. They justified the much higher price tag by saying that anything lower would be unfair to players who had already spent money on the event. This proposed solution came off as tone deaf, and players retaliated again.
The Iron Crown misstep exemplifies the ongoing trouble Respawn has had in finding a monetization strategy that works for it. It has carved out a very specific niche for itself and has had difficulty finding a solution. It makes sense that this would frustrate the developers who just want people to play their game.
A Reddit Controversy
After Respawn announced the band-aid it would put on their Iron Crown event mishap, players took to Reddit to voice their frustration for the company's seeming misunderstanding of the player-base. The threads started out frustrated, but that frustration grew into anger, and that anger brought out a nastiness that can sometimes manifest around gaming controversies.
Once the thread picked up steam, some of the developers at Respawn decided to step in and offer an explanation of the difficulty of getting players to purchase things in the game. One developer called Apex Legends fans "freeloaders" and "ass-hats," saying that regardless of the price, players of the game simply do not buy things. This insult instigated an even larger uproar. Fans couldn't believe the developer would refer to them that way.
The whole ordeal culminated in an apology on Twitter from Respawn CEO Vince Zampella for the comments the developers made in the thread. Zampella said that employees at his studio had a right to defend themselves in the wake of "toxic and nasty comments" and death threats aimed at developers' families, but that they should have done so in a more professional manner. Zampella did not comment on the Iron Crown controversy.
It's a shame that the whole thing had to come to this. While employees at any company should never insult their community, gamers need to understand the complexity of this issue and remember that often times developers don't have much of a say in monetization strategies. Either way, both sides made mistakes and now Apex Legends fans caught in the middle must wonder what Respawn can do to win back the faith of the community.
A Way Forward
Monetization is not straightforward. A lot of factors come in to play when making games profitable. But to speculate, this problem for Apex Legends seems to stem from the fact that its player-base came from two different places. When a new free-to-play battle royale title launches, the battle royale community tends to try it out. That mostly means Fortnite and PUBG players. While some of them may have stuck around, the majority, especially Fortnite players, probably ended up going back. Fortnite still has an untouchable level of success and it exists on nearly every device imaginable.
That means that the folks left playing Apex Legends most likely came from the other source: multiplayer shooters and hero shooters like Overwatch. Apex Legends has a lot of appeal in this community because it features a team structure and a roster of heroes who allow players to contribute to their team in ways beyond just racking up kills.
But while Overwatch rakes in the dough, Apex Legends can't seem to do the same. Apex Legends allows anyone to download and play for free while Overwatch requires a $60 purchase for entry. Just because Overwatch makes money now, that doesn't mean it did so at the beginning. The game has had years to build up a roster of characters, a ton of maps, and a generous loot box system that doesn't force players to spend money on cosmetics, but rather gives them just little enough for them to do so on their own. Blizzard built a financial backbone from that $60 buy-in. It then leaned on that money in order to turn the experience into something that players want to spend money on.
Apex Legends doesn't have that backbone. They hope to apply the Fortnite monetization strategy to an Overwatch style game, but Apex players don't want to play that way. If Respawn and EA want to see Apex Legends grow into something larger and more profitable, they need to invest a little more into it first. EA can almost certainly afford it. If they adopted a more generous cosmetic approach like the one Overwatch has, they could get players hooked into the drip, and make the game profitable in a couple of years. They just need to show players a little more generosity.
Apex Legends is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
