Apex Legends is once again in the news but this time for all wrong reasons. Developers Respawn Entertainment admits in a Reddit thread how the Iron Crown Collection Event is expensive, complicated which later turned into a raged exchange of words between Respawn staff and members of the Apex Legends community.
The major issue with the Iron Crown Event was the unnecessarily expensive loot box mechanism. The event introduced 24 unlockable packs with set items and these weren’t randomized loot boxes. But you only get two of those packs for free. Furthermore, to unlock the rest you needed to spend 700 Apex Coins ($7) and unlock each successive box. If you want any item from a different box, you need to spend $154 to get it. However, the odds suggest you would likely end up spending a significant amount of money to get anything in particular. Fans reacted to this angrily, feeling that Respawn had gone too far in its monetization policies of the free-to-play game now.
Respawn finally announced major changes to Iron Crown cosmetics on Friday. It is now available for direct purchase with the game’s in-world currency (which also can be bought for real money).
The official blog post announcing the changes made an apology, saying the studio “need[s] to be better at letting our players know what to expect,” and that the situation “has been a huge learning experience for us.”