Respawn dashes Apex Legends players’ hopes of a new pay-to-win skin

Pay-to-win skins are always in fashion in Apex Legends. Those weapon skins with iron sights that give players a tiny advantage through cleaner fields of vision and slimmer weapon models are some of the most prized cosmetics in the game.

With the new Sun Squad event, players thought they finally had a new pay-to-win skin for the Flatline, which was on the receiving end of an iron sight nerf to two of the most famous pay-to-win skins in the game: the Heavy Metal and Heat Sink Legendary skins. Those two skins were the rewards for completing the season four battle pass, but they also had iron sights that were so good, Respawn intentionally made them a bit worse, covering up more field of vision.

Unfortunately for those players who thought the new Splash Zone Flatline was the pay-to-win savior skin they’d been looking for, those iron sights are going to get changed shortly.

While the iron sights on the Splash Zone skin as they currently exist in the game look possibly even better than the famous pay-to-win Flatline skins of the past, it turns out that they are also a mistake. There’s a little missing piece of the weapon model that either isn’t rendering properly or that the dev team forgot to put in before the update went out today.

Related: All current ‘pay-to-win’ weapon skins in Apex Legends

Players, understandably, aren’t taking very kindly to the news.

Several players immediately bought the event skin purely for the iron sights that will now be reverted to iron sights that look basically like the default skins and don’t provide any sort of gameplay advantage.

While this all seems silly and small, the extra vision that these pay-to-win iron sights afford players can often be the difference between seeing an opponent in your sights and losing them completely in the visual clutter. Especially when fighting off drop, when you often don’t have the time to search around for attachments and an optic for whatever gun you’re using, having a skin that lets you see more clearly than other skins can win you a fight.

It doesn’t seem likely that Respawn will grant players refunds for the skin since any person who bought it could theoretically just claim they unlocked it for the iron sights. But players who still want the chance to see the difference for themselves can check out the skin soon before Respawn pushes out a fix.