Gamers double down against battle passes: ‘Worst thing that has happened to gaming’

Overwatch 2, Call of Duty, Fortnite, Street Fighter 6, Diablo 4, and League of Legends have one thing in common—elaborate battle pass systems that draws you because of the fear of missing out and keeps you grinding to get your money’s worth. Year in, and year out, it only seems as if the battle pass systems are deteriorating in quality, and finally, gamers have doubled down against battle passes, saying it’s the “worst thing that has happened to gaming.”

On Aug. 5, one frustrated gamer put together a post on the Gaming subreddit which, at first, seems like nothing but a long rant about battle passes. But, the player goes into detail, explaining everything wrong with the alternative to subscription fees and loot boxes.

The ideas this player expressed can be broken down into seven simple points:

1. You still have to invest so much more time to earn the battle pass rewards, despite paying money for it
2. Most of the rewards are random “garbage” you rarely actually use
3. If life gets in the way and you can’t spend much time playing the game, you can’t really get the rewards
4. The battle pass grind is “obscene” and it aims to keep you engaged as a player
5. Games that could work normally as offline games are forced to be online just because of battle passes (for example Diablo 4)
6. More and more games have a battle pass system and you’re actually discouraged from playing multiple games at the same time
7. You’re incentivized to buy “new and improved” battle passes that will help you skip tiers and speed up your progress

Soon after the post went live, the gamers united under one common opinion: Battle passes and daily quests make you feel like you have another job and you just can’t really sit back and enjoy the game like you could in the good old days. 

Related: Is the Baldur’s Gate 3 Collector’s Edition worth it?

The community continued by calling games as a service a sinister model, explaining how every little feature presented in the game is meant to keep you busy and engaged for as long as possible: 

“The battle passes, predatory gameplay loops, daily doodahs, FOMO, and reskins/reduxes keep them from feeling they can leave – the microtransactions and unclear, multi-tiered cost of virtually every little addon milks their wallet when they’re stuck.,” added one player.

The worst are the games, like Diablo 4, in which you pay $70, and then Blizzard Entertainment has the audacity to ask even more money from you with regular and accelerated battle passes. If you pay the game such a handsome sum, you should get everything, and I truly mean everything. The best example of this is Baldur’s Gate 3 where Larian Studios put a pretty price tag on the game, but there are no in-game purchases or microtransactions. 

Dota 2 and Fortnite first started with battle pass systems and before you know it, they were a replacement for predatory business practices like loot boxes. Soon, other games would join, and fast-forward to 2023, we have battle passes everywhere we turn.

This system is yet another means to keep the players engaged and playing the game in an artificial way and not by giving the game the love and attention it actually needs.