I feel like 343 hates us free players. Whether or not they do doesn’t really matter, what matters is how free players feel. Free players could become paying customers at any time, so why drive them away? Let me explain:
Out of one side of their mouth, they talk about how the S2 battlepass provides so much more value to free players, and how they really love their free players so so much.
Out of the other side of their mouth, they unexpectedly blindside free players by announcing less than a week before the launch of S2 that the S1 Battlepass actually does expire, surprise! Unless you paid for it. This is so scummy I don’t have words to describe it. For more than a year they’ve been saying, pretty much verbatim, “Unlike everyone else, our battlepass never expires, we’re so pro-consumer!” Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think they ever stated that the S1 battlepass would expire for free players until 6 days before the launch of S2.
To be fair, in their original multiplayer vidoc from last summer, they did say that “once you buy it, it’s yours forever”, leaving it open to interpretation as to what would happen with the free track (although we didn’t know a free track even existed at that point); however, the fact remains that their messaging led people to believe it would stick around for free players too. I mean, why wouldn’t it? After a couple years of MCC battlepasses that were free and stuck around forever, and the clear and consistent messaging from 343 that “your battlepass will never expire”, and finally the admission from Sketch in the S2 stream that the announcement that the battlepass would expire for free players would come as a surprise to players, I think it is fair to say that at best, 343 failed to control the narrative, and mistakenly misled players with their unclear messaging, and at worst, they tried to keep this as much a secret as possible without contradicting themselves so that when S2 rolled around, they could nickel and dime us free players into paying for content that used to be free.
A relevant side note is the challenge system. Free players can only progress on 3 challenges at a time, which is honestly just a big fat f*** you to people like me. It makes the game more frustrating to play in the hopes that I’ll spend money to make it less irritating.
For anyone who feels like I don’t deserve a say since I am a free player…
- I paid $60 for the campaign, and in my mind I paid $60 for a full package. I’m still a paying customer, even if I don’t spend on the multiplayer, and I want the product I own to be the best it can be.
- 343 has nothing to gain from alienating free players like me. I would have bought the S2 pass if not for their scummy business practices.
I think they believe the calculated risk of alienating some free players will be offset by the free players who decide to go back and pay for the old pass, and future passes that expire as well. I hope that’s not the case.
I refuse to pay money to an anti-consumer business model. If they want to make playing the game less fun for me, I won’t pay them. I think the only pro-consumer way to do Free to Play is to just improve the experience for paid players, but not downgrade it for free ones.
I’ll end by saying this: I was honestly considering buying the S2 pass, but after they decided to make free battlepasses expire, I changed my mind. I have no right to tell others how to use their money, but I implore others to speak with their wallets, and not pay into this anti-consumer system. Pay for games that value their customers and potential customers.
