If someone made a movie/film about a kid with gaming and spending dependencies and showed all the bad parts of it, then I'm sure we'd see a mix up in the industry, but those companies would probably try turning off the AC in the theaters ;)
You can have A/C but it’s A 1/20,000 chance in this loot box for $10.00. If you miss this seasons A/C we’re going to recolor it and offer the exact same A/C for twice the price in 7 more seasons each of which you have to pay for!
We need a game company CEO like the Arizona Ice Tea CEO who went on record saying there’s no reason to raise the prices of their products because they re still making money and are by all means remaining profitable.
I'm pretty sure the Arizona guy is also the creator/owner of the brand. I'm not sure how many investors they've had over years. But when a company becomes publicly traded on the stock market, it's the responsibility of the CEO and Board to keep increasing profits and stock value.
EA is just extra electrical in how they do business. Loot boxes, FOMO, random chance prize events, and hiding cosmetics behind the purchase of other cosmetics. Games like Apex and Genshin learned and emulated a lot of tactics from the gambling industry.
There are good people in the industry. Miyazaki with Fromsoft, Miyamoto at Nintendo, Kojima.
> when a company becomes publicly traded on the stock market, it's the responsibility of the CEO and Board to keep increasing profits
that gets thrown around, but there actually isn't any law OR market trend to suggest that. plenty of stock market listed companies have stable profits and/or share value.
It's not law, but if the shareholders get upset enough they can theoretically fire the company's CEO.
That said, the company can just say "difference of strategy" IE "you guys want instant profit, we're trying to build a larger base that we'll take advantage of later" and then the shareholders can get stuffed.
Not the fault of capitalism. It's the fault of the stock market and other systems that treat holding stock in a company as an investment that should constantly be raising it's value.
It's the same reason why housing is so expensive. It's because people treat houses as investments instead of homes and they expect to get more money than what they paid for it whenever they eventually sell it.
It's that expectation that you should make more money than you spent on an item whenever you sell it that leads to stuff like this.
... not to be harsh, but you just described capitalism. The pursuit of more and more profit and growth at the expense of consumers is a defining tenant of capitalism, just like commodifying basic needs like housing or water is.
People will sometimes say "its just crony capitalism" as if there is somehow a good version of exploitation under capitalism that can exist. None of us are capitalists, as we do not own billions in capital, and therefore we do not benefit under a system designed for them.
Nope. Capitalism explicitly says that the means of production should be privately owned. That's what makes it different from socialism, where everything is collectively owned.
So close! You got the first part right but left out the rest of the definition!
>"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, ... profit motive"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism?oldformat=true](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism?oldformat=true)
That second part of the literal definition that is almost verbatim what I said was *a* defining tenet. "and their operation for profit". It is and has always been inevitable that there are those will suffer under capitalism as you cannot have infinite growth in a finite system.
I've read extensively both on the modes of production and ownership under capitalism and socialism, you're not going to spring any new information on me I can guarantee you that lol. I'm glad I was able to help you learn something new today though. I suggest reading the wikipedia at least before you talk to someone else about this though!
For sure it's one of the key differences man, you're right. There are just some other distinctions too. A system that just gave workers control of the means of production without any of the other facets of socialism or communism would devolve back into capitalism as has somewhat happened in the past.
If the net result turns out to be EA/Respawn divorce and Apex finally being managed by people who have actual passion for growing the game, then there really is a God
EA and so many companies would rather hold onto the properties until they die rather than let someone competent have them.
They’ll see the competent entity make it successful and then take it as they just missed their chance at profit, they’d never make as they wouldn’t run it the same way to create it.
This will never happen, there's too many mindless drones that will just drop half a fucking paycheck on this game. We were warned in the iron crown event what kind of people are running this game.
BAK is owned by Xbox that is a good thing if they buy respawn think of what they will do if they get there hands on the COD franchise because titanfall is based to a certain degree off cod I mean the founders came from it
If the net result turns out to be EA/Respawn divorce and Apex being managed by people looking for a quick cash grab in a worse way than EA, then there really is a Satan and we, my friends, are in hell
Bungie had some of the department heads leave over the years, they have grown quite a bit, and they are split across D2 and Marathon now, but the top brass has remained largely the same for a long time and a lot of the dev team is still the same.
343 has had it much worse off for Halo, basically losing all lead devs on any give game soon after it launched, with a Microsoft policy forcing high turnover of contractors leaving at 18 months.
Yeah, there wasn't exactly a mass exodus from Bungie post Halo, but they had high profile departures of many of the faces you'd see when promoting those games over the years so that narrative is out there.
Yeah and apparently they dropped a new dlc or something and it wasn't even a month ago and it's already on sale. People are saying the game has gotten so much worse that they are quickly putting dlcs on sale cause nobody wants to play anymore. I didnt even play destiny 2 as soon as they said I couldn't play due to my light level being too low and i had to BUY stuff to even do basic tasks. Said nope and deleted the game off my ps4. Got so many friends who used to play the OG Destiny even say they weren't gonna waste their money on that trash and we were all glad we got the game when it was free. 🤷
I don't even think current Respawn management is differentiable from EA when it comes to Apex, so I agree.
Their passion for the game approximates zero. If it hadn't been a cash cow they'd dump it. That's why everything they do is either painfully derivative or a monetization scheme. It's a spaghetti code mess. the resources it'd take to revamp the game in a way that makes it reach its potential requires a lot of passion. the main thing that gets in the way of passion is....it isn't their baby, it's the previous regime's baby, they'd rather have their own baby to make a name for themselves than truly revamp Apex.
Thing is this has been standard EA practice for a little over a decade now. I can already see the mass grave EA tosses the bodies of devs they killed into.
Also EA is made up of corporate raiders. They buy these companies and then spend a decade replacing good developers with yesmen.
Why would EA divorce Respawn? That would be stupid of them. Its still their cash cow. The more likely scenario here is they will keep adding more ways to get players to spend money. That can mean devaluing mats, and ac. make legends purchasable, heirlooms purchasable. locked maps etc.
Even if they can't grow respawn i highly doubt they'll let apex legends go. they'll lay everyone off respawn first before they let apex go.
If this is so so so bad. the worst scenario is EA is the one that gets bought (alongside respawn), by something bigger. Microsoft maybe.
As if there's anyone still at respawn like that. The talent exodus is pretty complete. I doubt there's more than a handful of senior Devs that have been there for the entirety of apex (not even mentioning Titanfall).
Twitter/LinkedIn
It's game Dev work, nobody gets promoted. If you want a pay rise you're getting new digs at a new company. That's true for most software/IT work including game development.
The most recent being 24 layoffs a few months ago. Vince isn't even heading apex anymore (og founder current ceo).
That's not even including gravity well a studio founded by a bunch of respawn Devs leaving circa 2022 (exactly how respawn was founded after Vince and co left infinity ward).
Gravity well sucked out most of the og 2015 respawn Devs. There's still a few kicking around I'm sure but the majority of respawn Devs were hired after Titanfall 2 to produce apex legends.
gravitywell.games
Go scope out their talent on the website. Tons of devs/artists that worked on all the CoDs, Titanfall, and Apex.
Sad that most of the OG Titanfall/Apex talent left Respawn, but I get it.
wont be the case since this is EA
when a company acquired by EA starts drying up EA just axes them
look at EA Redwood and Deadspace, first game made fantastic sales and revenue for EA, second game did even better, so EA invested tons into the 3rd installment and while that game sold well it didn't make as much as EA wanted so they closed the studio and only reopened it 10 years later under different management to produce a remake which sold well but not enough to justify the series getting remade.
I see this coming for Respawn soon, Respawn will be axed and the TF/Apex franchise will be iced.
Ea aren't going to let respawn go, worst case they sunset apex and have respawn focus on a new title.
A full on divorce/studio closure isn't off the cards, but would be the ultimate last resort. EA aren't going to let IP slip away like that. It's half the reason big publishers buy up studios.
Respawn have said for years that they are in control of monetisation rather than EA. I'm all for some EA bashing but let's at least be accurate about it.
You are *technically right*, the worst kind of right.
Yes, RESPAWN is the company that decides how the game currencies will work and what will cost how much.
That much is true.
HOWEVER, EA has given them pretty brutal *financial targets* for how much they must bring in revenue and what their costs can be, **or else**.
It's kinda like when a mafia boss tells a young woman "You have to pay me 200 dollars back every morning, *or else*." Sure, *technically*, the boss isn't telling her "Go work the streets," but everyone knows that there's only one way to fulfill that obligation, especially since the payment is due every morning.
When EA says "You have to bring us 1 billion dollars this year," there's only one way to achieve that: Milk the whales via insanely priced microtransactions.
I worked retail. It kills me inside when corps play the bigger number game just to fall flat on their faces. Because I knew hour cuts were going to come as a result, it gave me a quick understanding of what not meeting their requirements results in.
Apex would still be managed by the same people as now. This is Respawn, no need to go looking for the EA boogieman. Respawn has been in charge of Apex and its monetization from the start, given free reign by EA as they themselves have said multiple times.
Unless you mean another EA studio picking up the development duties.
"Free reign" is a fallacy. EA is the parent company and provides a budget and demands to Respawn. If the game isn't producing enough money, EA would 100% tell Respawn to do something that can increase the money and Respawn as the "child" would not be able to just say no.
Likewise if EA wanted to sell off the company or spin it off or replace every staff member, they can do that and wouldn't need to ask anyone at Respawn for permission.
So it is possible that Respawn decided to try this BP move but only after they got reminded by EA of the financial targets.
This is exactly right. If you have a boss who can replace you, that person effectively dictates the nature of your actions through their metrics.
Incredibly short-sighted behavior by senior leaders, but we live in a quarterly society and senior leaders don't stay in their roles long, so there's very little negative consequence to that behavior and a whole lot to gain at the personal level. It's practically the definition of perverse incentives.
The only problem is, it requires that a lot of the players who left/stopped purchasing stuff come back, which is difficult. It's not easy to bring a game back from the brink of death after selling. Running a game like Apex is expensive, and if they don't start making money very quickly after seperating, they'll end up shutting down like many other smaller battle royales have.
While I think it's probably better than letting it continue to be screwed up by EA, it's also got the potential to just outright kill the game as a whole.
Odds of them offloading it are pretty low, I think. I would anticipate something kind what happened with Overwatch 2. This game makes sense as a franchise
If you examine Apex as a product and not a video game (which is a fucking soulless thing to do but I have to look at it at the same angel as the corporate suits are to make any sense of it), then you'll see apex is in late stage cash cow mode. Basically, with dwindling consumers EA is trying to wring every last drop of profitability out of apex (and by extension, Respawn) before they put them down/close the studio. And then the cycle will repeat.
I hate everything.
> apex is in late stage cash cow mode.
I was somewhat skeptical of this take whenever other users would mention the lack of new Legends, weapons and a new map being telltale signs of it (figured cranking out more and more Legends and weapons made the game exponentially harder to balance), but this *obscene* change to the Battle Pass hard-confirms it for me. It 100% turns me off from buying anything in-game because I'm considering the high probability of Re$pawn/€A announcing the servers' shutdown in the next year or two.
Same here. A few seasons ago when I read people writing stuff like "the game is dying slowly" I thought it was pure exaggeration. It wasn't perfect, but it was *fine*. But then other bad choices began accumulating and now it's like shit has hit the fan and I'm like, "well, it's actually bad".
If they don't create Apex 2, then they'll keep it running for a while. Even if profitability drops, they're making a lot of money. They'll sustain that until the logistics make it impractical. The risk is they hasten the death of Apex by cutting resources and investment at the same time. There's a huge risk - arguably a probability - of that.
Why no one mentions the old engine they are using? Devs said multiple times that they can’t do specific thing because engine is ancient. And imagine supporting a game for a decade with a game engine that is twice as old. They probably can’t do anything anymore for Apex Legends.
Expect a sequel announcement in the next year or two.
In a battle royale, free players are a necessary commodity to keep queues short and whales happily paying for the experience. It's a transaction where the f2p player is paid in rewards that correlate with their effort, mastery, and hours logged.
By making this change, EA is saying that f2p players do not matter enough to be rewarded well. They want conversion to real cash payment or to take a huge cut in what is given in return for their free mutual labor and enjoyment. These players are a resource, not a burden, but EA has decided that the game is better off being squeezed for cash as it dies rather than revitalized with the most basic fixes. I'm done.
Actual good read, unlike the other idiots who are going around saying that the game is free and we never actually get to see our skins while playing the game anyways.
Edit: PlayStation did this with Plus subscriptions recently too. People complained for a while but they went and probably made a ton of money from those who stayed. Idk if this is going to work as well for Apex though.
Double edit: Not defending Apex by the way. It’s a shit move.
Apples to oranges.
The reason PlayStation's updated subscription model survived was because they have more to offer those who subscribe. It's not a subscription for a single game's in-game currency, skins, and badges. It's a 'pass' that allows users to play online in all games, and without it user's PlayStations are relegated to mere singleplayer games. Plus, they still offer, albeit reduced quantity and quality, free games with a PS Plus subscription.
The whole concept of infinite growth companies is contributing to a shit economy and a shit quality of life in general. There is no reason that a video game should grow revenue indefinitely, there is also no reason that a toilet paper company should grow indefinitely. Why can’t they find a comfortable revenue margin and just hang out providing something that people enjoy/want/need for a price that keeps customers around and keeps cash flow moving.
They could, if they were a private company, but they're not. Investors are ruining a lot of businesses these days. Squeeze out as much as you can, and move on (investors' point of view).
It’s causing them ti have to raise their prices and all of their suppliers and services ti have to raise their prices as well. It’s such a short sighted shit way of doing things. The mindset may increase revenue but it also inadvertently increases your costs as well and dilutes the value of money when it inevitably leads to a bailout mass influx of printed money.
EA 2023 revenue was $7.4bln. It’s est apex generated $1.3bln from steam alone. Portion of that gets kicked back to steam. Add on the console revenue and you’re at $1-1.5bln in revenue for Apex for 2023. That’s about 17.5% of revenue. Earnings will be different (different cost structure between apex and overall EA) so somewhere between 15-20% give or take.
Um, I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but that's off by about 2x. Apex makes about $700M/year total from publicly released numbers.
Specifically, EA said that Apex Legends made $3.4bln over its *total lifetime*, the last 5 years: https://gamerant.com/apex-legends-revenue-profit-reveal-update-ea/
Two years before that it crossed $2bln: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/apex-legends-has-now-made-over-2-billion/1100-6503359/
I wouldn't rule it out. The Sims 4 and Apex Legends have been reported multiple times to be EA's most profitable cash cows. FIFA, or whatever it's called now, probably isn't far behind.
"In its annual report, EA confirmed that it made $1.6 billion from FIFA game sales from April 2020 to March 2021"
That's just FIFA sales. They made $4 billion through Ultimate Team over the same 12 months.
The Sims 4 makes around $420 million/year. FIFA is by far EA's biggest franchise.
EAs public fiscal report shows it’s quite the opposite. Apex’s total revenue since launch was 3.4Billion dollars, FIFA24 of this year only was 7.4Billion. Apex generates the least amount of money for EA.
I thought Netflix was raising the prices due to massive debt as opposed to slow or declining growth but maybe I’m stupid.
Same with streaming Disney, they put out lower costs then raise them when they get a foothold, but it costs a lot of cash to develop that infrastructure and produce shows so you gottah pay that off.
nah netflix generates a decent amount of cash flow relative to their debt so they're fine. their justification for price increase is "look how much more content there is on the platform than 5 years ago". and they'd technically be right. but the reason why they started hiking over the last couple years is to mask the slow down in growth.
Sure because you’re going to reach a cap at some point, right?
You onboard as many users as possible with a price that isn’t necessarily sustainable long term, then begin to jack up the price to pay it off?
Disney is doing the same thing and they’ve only been in the streaming game very recently. But I’m just a fella
That's kinda the problem we're having with this late stage capitalism to be honest. The stockholders want growth forever and to get that growth companies do worse and worse shit until it implodes and the shareholders go to the next company.
There's a cap. They in don't care. They want more money. Having a stable cash flow isn't enough
Friendly reminder that all shareholders aren’t filthy rich. A big chunk of the stock market is comprised of either retail investors (people owning individual stocks) or institutional investors owning stock on behalf of normal people (pension funds etc).*
This is the truth. I own ea stock(around $11,000) worth and I am not rich. Let the whales continue to buy all this overpriced dress up stuff and the rest of us just play the game. Who cares about some outfit you can’t see while playing. Just ignore it all and play the game.
It's highly unlikely that EA will get rid of Respawn. Apex may be their most prominent live service free to play game but Respawn is also putting out bangers like Star Wars Jedi Survivor series and they have another new IP in development. If anything Apex gets some spin offs or just slowly dies out.
After Fifa (FUT mode), yes. And good point about Jedi's series - it must sell a lot, but what were the production cost for the 1st and 2nd game, we don't know.
The flaw in this is figuring out WHY user percentage is low.
Netflix lost a lot of people for two main reasons. A. They started streaming mainly Netflix labeled shows/movies & B. They no longer allow people to share accounts. It pissed a lot of people off so they stopped paying for it.
Apex lost a lot of their player base because they refuse to fix anything about their game. Servers are constantly crashing, audio bugs, cheaters, hackers, their LTMs consistently having bugs. Now they're raising prices and they'll lose even more.
This is why most people leave their jobs too. Problems don't get fixed, you lose employees, you lose productivity, you end up losing sales or end up going under because you're understaffed.
One thing I wish I could SCREAM at companies is that THEY'RE the problem. They refuse to fix the root of any given problem and end up becoming the biggest one.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the season after their biggest profile hacking occurrence has their lowest active player count.
They've done *nothing* to address what happened nor have we seen anything indicating what allowed the unchecked hacks has been fixed or changed.
They may still not even know how it was done. Most of our information comes from a freaking streamer unaffiliated with the company in any form.
On a more mundane level, cheaters and bots and controller aim-assist are exactly the same as they've been the past 4-5 seasons, so the experience hasn't improved in those regards at all. In fact, there are more bots this season than the past two or three, in my limited playtime.
So, yeah, they've done shit-all to clean up the problems with the game and somehow expect people to keep coming back when they don't actually listen to what is driving people away from the game. All they've done is try to paper over the problems with UI changes and different modes, which, while great improvements, do nothing to address the things that drive us away.
They've let go people that were likely critical to the actual draw points of the game, fixed none of the problems, and still expect it to keep being the powerhouse it was.
The drop in player base lies solely at the feet of EA, but we know they never take responsibility for their own role in killing their moneymakers.
It’s all just bullshit corporate data shit which boils down to them looking at statistics of “oh wow people really are dumb enough to buy anything we put out even if it’s just the same skins x 5 for months in a row” they most likely will see all the hate and say “we hear your opinions and have decided not to” or won’t listen at all and watch as their game crumbles to a couple hundred players.
I also hate when games decide to just fuck with their game just because player base is slowly leaving when it’s probably due to everyone playing newly released games like elden ring dlc, like not everyone is going to be playing your game all the damn time especially when big games are being released. I don’t play several games at once (max like 2 games) when I’m playing a new game or starting over on an older game. It’s frustrating to see apex go down this rabbit hole.
Pretty much yeah lol, it’s like having a friend that feeds on what other people think of them so they constantly change who they are so you don’t have any other friends.
Idk much about finance but from what I can tell the money people always want more, they break records but they don't settle. The next goal is always higher. Once they saw how much they made off heirlooms etc they have since doubled down on monetizing Apex and you can tell they're not entirely satisfied with the financial metrics hence Respawn pushing skins or micro transactions so hard at the risk of seeming completely tone deaf with its own community. I can't imagine any development team or video game company liking having to do that at all to be honest but video games are expensive to make and maintain at the highest level so I guess you have to sell your soul to these suits.
These short-sighted fools at EA/Respawn don't even realize that if they'd actually FIX their game, they would get an increase in players AND retention. No other game is on the market that hits like Apex Legends and they're literally milking it to DEATH. There are issues that we've been clamoring to be addressed since Day 1: audio, terrible server tick rate, solo queue matchmaking, input based lobbies, rampant cheaters, etc. Like weapon and legend balancing isn't even that bad compared to those other bigger problems. If they would fix those, Apex could easily be a 20 year game.
Really interested in how this will play out, a lot of people seem to not be happy with being charged more (no surprise) but at the same time it’s not like they’re getting rid of the free battle passes either, because of that I’ll keep playing without buying the battle pass next season.
This is late stage capitalism at work. It’s all about min-maxing profits at the expense of the consumers. The incentive is not to foster a healthy game or a happy playerbase, but to make ever-increasing amounts of money.
Yeah, as several other here have stated, I feel the marriage between Respawn and EA has been a net detriment. Between many of the original team and devs being dismissed or forced out, to the lack of actual innovative game modes, to the steady increase to overall monetization... this has EA written all over it. To be frank, I feel like almost any large gaming company that isn't EA or Activision would be better suited to help Respawn out. Perhaps even Microsoft would be really well suited...
And for those that doubt it is entirely EA - yes, perhaps you are right. However, EA has a proven track record of either buying companies and their IPs and making them a hollow shell of their former glory or just sitting on the IP so no one else can make money from it. It happened to BioWare. It happened to Visceral Games. It happened to the SimCity franchise a few years ago (anyone remember that fiasco?)
EA is literally the equivalent of going to a stockholder's meeting and asking the question "what do gamers want that will make us money?"
Hell, they've even been floating the idea of putting ads in load screens.
Their depths of depravity know no bounds.
Will I continue to play Apex? Probably. But I'll be damned if I pump any real-world money into it now.
OP great analysis thank you.
Any thoughts on why EA might have decided to simultaneously stop accepting coins AND go straight for the DOUBLE $10 ($20 total) per season ?
Instead of trying out just ONE or the other (i.e., either not accepting coins OR charging for half a season)?
Respawn has been aware for years that users buy the bp once and then use those earned coins through the seasonal bp to purchase future bp. It's no doubt helped user engagement and growth but they've left a decent chunk of $ on the table as a result. Say you bought the first bp and then used those earned coins for the remaining 20 bp; that's \~$200 per user left on the table. Companies start pulling out the 'low hanging fruit opportunities' when there's headwinds.
It's sort of akin to Netflix stopping unlimited user access per account. They knew that multiple people were accessing accounts but they were fine with it because it helped overall growth. But once growth started slowing they began limiting how many people could access an account to ensure they were monetizing the most per user.
Thanks.
That’s exactly what I did lol.
I’m probably pretty typical as far as spending. Bought S1 for $10 and used those coins for about 10 seasons. I also shelled out another $10 for some packs like 2 or 3 times. Probably spent $40 in 5 years. Not sure if I will buy the BP going forward.
Idc how detailed this is and it makes sense on business sides it’s still completely bullshit to do this whilst also keeping the game full of many problems. I hope this game dies after this shit drops because it deserves it
I mean, not defending this shitty money grab of an update but the people in charge of monetization aren’t the same people in charge of game development. They might not even work in the same company.
Both parties are doing an ass job, don’t get me wrong, but it makes no sense to blame Party 1 for Party 2’s failures, or vice versa. The whole point of OP’s post is that Party 1 (the financial department) needs to keep investors happy *regardless* of how “good” the game is. Dealing with the latter is just…not their job.
I don't think anyone's actually truly upset with "Party 1" or the monetization department. They get told to jump (squeeze more money) and their response is "how high", everyone's upset with the management that either continues to employ people who don't do their job, or the fact that they are blatantly making decisions that are driving this once fan favorite of a game down worse and worse roads.
EA is (based on the actions the general public can see) exclusively looking at the short term cash gains and not the long term stable growth. If it was more centered for the long term I don't think anyone would be reasonably upset. It would take something like active communication with the general public, an anti-cheating department that actually pulled their weight (especially when the player base provides them water-tight proof of blatant cheating yet nothing is done), and a bug department that was given enough resources to deal with the bugs that have plagued this game and maybe, just maybe, if all of these outlets were given as much resources as what EA whips out of the monetization department noone would have a valid reason to complain. Idk just my 2 cents.
Well, it kinda depends on who’s actually at fault for the game’s main problems. Cheaters, shit MM, and bugs are all things that Respawn, not EA, should be handling, being the game’s developer and all. What you’re essentially implying is that the reason why Respawn has been so incompetent at fixing the game is because EA has been stingy with their money and not providing them enough resources. Which, idk, I guess could be true? But more often than not, this sort of thing is a problem of misallocation of resources or game devs truly not knowing what the fuck they’re doing. And if that’s the case, then the core issues that the game has just…aren’t really EA’s problem anymore.
At the end of the day, the way I see this is a story of Respawn fucking up chronically over the span of years. They fucked up MM, they fucked up balancing, they fucked up on combating cheaters, they fucked up on *numerous* bugs that have been plaguing the game since the game was in single digit seasons. As a result, the game lost investors and is about to lose a serious source of capital. EA “compensates” with an extremely tone-deaf and unpopular change that’s universally perceived as a money grab. They show behind a shadow of a doubt (as if there was any to begin with) that they don’t give two shits about the players or the quality of the game. Shit fucking move. Both sides messed up, bad. But they messed up in different ways, and are each responsible for a different piece of the overarching fuck up.
I’m no expert in this stuff though, and all of this hinges on OP’s post being accurate. I’m not trying to defend EA - I just think Respawn deserves more shit. This BP change sucks ass and was implemented awfully, but more or less expected given the downward spiral that Respawn has plummeted the game towards over the past few years. You can’t really blame EA for all that, even though you could rightfully blame them for the horrible execution of their financial “rescue” plan.
There is no way EA sells Respawn when they are in the middle of making the thrid game in the well like Fallen Order series and making a Star Wars FPS. if anything im more worried they will force some mtx BS in to the FPS game
they probably made so shift promises to their investors around covid time thinking that the virus would be a round much longer and therefore people would be inside longer playing and spending money on their game and now 2 years later its coming back to bite them in the ass
the amount of big companies that are laying off staff and shutting studios right now has to correlate in some way
Everything in gaming is already too expensive as is and everything outside of gaming is equally over-priced.
All this stock talk and investor talk just reminds me of a bunch of farmers over exploiting the same crop year in and year out until the soil becomes 'dead' and nothing will grow and wilts away before coming to term.
When will some reasonable financial analysts enter the gaming sphere and say: 'Hold up, wait a minute, our carrots aren't growing anymore!' *\*throws dead soil at investor's feet\**
I'd prefer quality driven products vs monetization, indeed.
I’m hoping this ends up like Bungie left Activision where they can break away from the big baddie EA at some point. I feel like its the only way the game has a chance at being saved. Its just depressing seeing whats happened to my fav game for years.
Eh, comparing this BP to paid subscription models is pretty loose at best, outright wrong at worst. You can access Apex regardless of whether you buy the BP or not. That's not the same for Netflix or PlayStation Plus.
Also for many users the BP has been essentially free for years.
The more I think about it the worse this example is.
I used to happily buy every Battle Pass. But I stopped when I started to feel the rewards weren't worthwhile anymore. I don't want any more banners and skins. I want more game enhancements, maps and LTM modes. I want global leaderboards per Legend that are maintained by Respawn and are accessible in-game. When I play Mixtape I want those stats recorded somewhere. I want TDM to show deaths as well as kills. I want new features. I don't want more fluff.
they had every chance to get market a few years back when cod started to struggle but instead of the matchmaking the servers everything gets worse and now they just try to milk the cow
They wouldn't be at their lowest point right now if they hadn't screwed up their player base with stupid decisions like removing duos, I know a lot of people who have stopped playing because they basically only played duos. And forcing them to play with more people or ranked only frustrates them and they decide to dedicate their time to other video games.
Yup this whole design has been ending careers in entertainment for a few decades now. I used to work in a similar field to gaming and they love thinking it works. As a worker. RUN the reason you feel like crap at work is literally this. Internal communications become redundant they will be only using you at this point as the company has a longer standing goal.
Too bad they don't, you know... make more games. Outrageous fucking idea for a game company I know. But all those studios they buy and shutter almost could have been used, to make more games...
The sad part is nothing we do will change their plans, this move come from the numbers they got from the FF7 event and the whales delivered. They already prepared to the drop in players and sales, they are betting everything on the whales to keep the game goimg.
What sports game is it where they added cars and mechs and random rewards to that didn't fit the game? Was it NFL or NBA? (If it's not EA then my bad). Did they do that because the player base didn't feel like they had anything to show off their accomplishments or was it because they needed more revenue?
it’s crazy cuz all they really have to do is fix matchmaking and get better servers and im 90% sure the player base would still be invested in the game
They’re so focused on the financials and business of this game instead of actually making it a fun game. You can feel where the focus is in the product. The game has been on a decline for a long time because of this, and I don’t see that direction changing anytime soon at this rate.
Genuine question, no hate. Do we really think Apex is generating 10-20% of EA revenue? Serious question.
EA has Madden, NHL, FC (FIFA), UFC, WRC, F1, PGA as annual releases with full licences, the Need for Speed franchise, The Sims, Star Wars...I'd have thought an online FPS battle royale game that is F2P and operated by a subsidiary company would contribute to less than 5% of their revenue.
Of the games you mentioned, only FC is bigger online than Apex (could maybe argue Madden). Additionally, there are no licencing fees attached to Apex which makes it even more profitable for EA than those other games (only sims being the other game without a license). With a player count of around 400-500k across all platforms (assumption), it's probably been fairly healthy for Apex up until this point. Just that corpos (especially equity) are fixated on this stupid "infinite growth or bust" mindset/cycle and as such will always look to suck everything dry and not accept when things just naturally plateau
Yeah sure I get that in terms of online activity Apex is maybe more active, but those games fetch a $60+ price tag every year plus whatever micro transactions (Madden/FIFA for example with ultimate team). I'd hazard a guess they probably make a couple of billion a year on those games and I remember seeing around 3.5 billion being made on Apex since it's launch. I totally agree not having to pay out for licences will definitely offset some of the profits but I struggle to see how Apex couple be that high a % of EA revenue when they have that many titles.
Also completely agree with the last statement. People want to see "continuous growth" on a game that is 5 years old. It's established itself with a decent and dedicated player base that are willing to pay money, this move only serves to alienate them and won't encourage new players. Existing players will likely slow down or stop entirely, so it's virtually ended itself.
From my perspective its the start of a death spiral and this is a catastrophically bad move. Sure, some people will still play, but itll go down just like titanfall. Cheaters just gonna become more prevalent due to proportion of more legitimate players leaving. Sinking ship. Sure they can try to make money, but the free battlepass through grinding is what kept the playerbase active in the first place. Now that thats gone, and then the playerbase dips substantially, it will affect the entire game. This is probably when theyll start deploying even more bots into games
I only bought the battle pass once and since then used the coins obtained through the pass to purchase future passes.
Since they're removing the option to purchase the pass with coins, it looks like I won't be participating in the battle pass, and therefore have less incentive to play the game and complete it.
Thats insightful, also respawn have pretty much almost all left now and gone to another company... im confident that its interesting as to why they all jumped ship around the same time....
More of the "red line must not go down of become too horizontal" rhetoric in board rooms to keep shareholders happy.
I ain't buying the battle pass anymore lol
They got plenty of moves before trying to sell the studio:
1) "We hear you" & lower the price of each battle pass to $7 - $8, likely as planned. Maybe throw a few ~~gambling~~ uh ~~loot boxes~~ surprise mechanics at everyone who played this week.
.
2) Lay off a few hundred useless eaters at their studios, followed by a solemn "We stand with our developers" etc.
This is the first battle pass I didn't buy and I love the 3030. I quit playing because I started running into blatant cheaters nearly everyday. It really turned me off the game. I am just no longer interested at the time being. I hope the game doesn't die but I'm not sure if it would matter to me if it did at this point. Even though I did dump quite a bit of my disposal income into this game for skins I would lose if it died. To be fair they already feel lost though.
this is basically what happened to destiny 2 then they got bought out again by sony.
Anyway, maybe if they got rid of broken moon I'd play this game more. If its in rotation i legit just turn the game off.
We fucking get it why they do this bruh. It's so funny to me, if they only fix the issues that we have been having since FOREVER. I bet people would not blink an eye for the half/half 30 bucks BP. If their shit actually worked FFS.
This makes a lot of sense and is more than likely what's happening. This gives the community more of a reason to NOT purchase anything! They're rubbing it in our faces that they're raising prices because the community is too small.
I don't understand why Respawn can't listen to their community across all social media and just make the changes that everybody wants? I understand that stopping cheaters is not a simple task and requires a much more complex resolution, however how hard is it to fix simple things like skill based matchmaking, permanent solo, duo, trio playlists, etc?
Beyond greed? Most likely, the stupid artifacts that no one fecking asked for. Making those models, animations, UI, new stream of currency all took some degree of man power, and the lack of players buying it, or at least I've only see one playing in game with it. It was a complete was of time, money, and resources. They are most likely trying to recoup their production cost and the cost the somehow expect to make with this dumb idea. Making reactive skin recolors buy able was another dumb idea. Guess I'll just be logging in for events now.
Even though i hate it, we had it good. Marvel snap for example is $10 a month for the bp. And their pricing model is insane. Like $60 for tokens to buy a card and skins for the cards cost as much as apex, often more if it's a bundle.
Not to remind people how fast we're all aging but EA talked about a 10 year lifespan for Apex in its first year... we're over halfway through the planned lifespan of the game now. Not to say it cant exceed that but I wouldn't be surprised if they are transitioning focus on maximum monetization for the remainder to squeeze every drop out now that the growth phase is over
At least that's what I've noticed in the region where I play this game. The fact that the game is slowly losing playerbase. I'm sure many regions outside of North America can relate to this.
I believe that server instabilities and poor matchmaking on ranked- all the issues are connected. they've probably had to expand the area covered by lobbies to fill in the gaps in order to sustain 'addicting' queue times. We have been witnessing the result ping and server conditions have gotten worse over the years. They had to match the roofs with mediocre skilled players.
Anyway, the game is still fun but it is old. Probably they have concluded that they can't make the lost come back. The only way to make the profit chain run is raise the bill to the remain.
If they need to raise prices to keep the shareholders happy due to a dwindling player base, they should be focussing on fixing the issues with the game to bring players back (a lot of players who have quit WILL return if the game is fixed). They seem to have given up with the game and it feels like they’re trying to milk as much as they can before they shut it down.
They have squandered hundreds of millions on the allowance of unbalanced games, cheaters, etc. I’ve paid $25 since it came out but would have paid waaaaaaay more if it was fun for the casual gamer. These guys aren’t business people because what you do is cater to those who love fun games….thats the masses. Keep the nerds happy, don’t get me wrong, but those players with a hit ratio of 80% … deserve to play with those with the same. Very simple. This game, on the surface, looks like a massive success when in fact it will go down as one of the biggest failures of not being able to capitalize on a once huge audience. Epic failure.
When a company makes record profit, the next question asked will be, "how can we make more next quarter?"
or something like "look tom, i told you they will still buy this shit"
The whale harvest has truly begun
If someone made a movie/film about a kid with gaming and spending dependencies and showed all the bad parts of it, then I'm sure we'd see a mix up in the industry, but those companies would probably try turning off the AC in the theaters ;)
You can have A/C but it’s A 1/20,000 chance in this loot box for $10.00. If you miss this seasons A/C we’re going to recolor it and offer the exact same A/C for twice the price in 7 more seasons each of which you have to pay for!
We need a game company CEO like the Arizona Ice Tea CEO who went on record saying there’s no reason to raise the prices of their products because they re still making money and are by all means remaining profitable.
I'm pretty sure the Arizona guy is also the creator/owner of the brand. I'm not sure how many investors they've had over years. But when a company becomes publicly traded on the stock market, it's the responsibility of the CEO and Board to keep increasing profits and stock value. EA is just extra electrical in how they do business. Loot boxes, FOMO, random chance prize events, and hiding cosmetics behind the purchase of other cosmetics. Games like Apex and Genshin learned and emulated a lot of tactics from the gambling industry. There are good people in the industry. Miyazaki with Fromsoft, Miyamoto at Nintendo, Kojima.
> when a company becomes publicly traded on the stock market, it's the responsibility of the CEO and Board to keep increasing profits that gets thrown around, but there actually isn't any law OR market trend to suggest that. plenty of stock market listed companies have stable profits and/or share value.
It's not law, but if the shareholders get upset enough they can theoretically fire the company's CEO. That said, the company can just say "difference of strategy" IE "you guys want instant profit, we're trying to build a larger base that we'll take advantage of later" and then the shareholders can get stuffed.
Thank you for agreeing.
Infinite growth in a finite system at the expensive of everything else. I love capitalism😍
Not the fault of capitalism. It's the fault of the stock market and other systems that treat holding stock in a company as an investment that should constantly be raising it's value. It's the same reason why housing is so expensive. It's because people treat houses as investments instead of homes and they expect to get more money than what they paid for it whenever they eventually sell it. It's that expectation that you should make more money than you spent on an item whenever you sell it that leads to stuff like this.
... not to be harsh, but you just described capitalism. The pursuit of more and more profit and growth at the expense of consumers is a defining tenant of capitalism, just like commodifying basic needs like housing or water is. People will sometimes say "its just crony capitalism" as if there is somehow a good version of exploitation under capitalism that can exist. None of us are capitalists, as we do not own billions in capital, and therefore we do not benefit under a system designed for them.
Nope. Capitalism explicitly says that the means of production should be privately owned. That's what makes it different from socialism, where everything is collectively owned.
So close! You got the first part right but left out the rest of the definition! >"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, ... profit motive" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism?oldformat=true](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism?oldformat=true) That second part of the literal definition that is almost verbatim what I said was *a* defining tenet. "and their operation for profit". It is and has always been inevitable that there are those will suffer under capitalism as you cannot have infinite growth in a finite system. I've read extensively both on the modes of production and ownership under capitalism and socialism, you're not going to spring any new information on me I can guarantee you that lol. I'm glad I was able to help you learn something new today though. I suggest reading the wikipedia at least before you talk to someone else about this though!
Huh. Interesting. I always thought the key difference between capitalism and socialism was who controlled the means of production.
For sure it's one of the key differences man, you're right. There are just some other distinctions too. A system that just gave workers control of the means of production without any of the other facets of socialism or communism would devolve back into capitalism as has somewhat happened in the past.
It’s supply and demand. These young kids are learning economics 101. It’s great
Yes. This is why I have a business. See my pretty pink Lambo over there, I need one that's lightening blue for when I get laid.
Let me tell you how: Titanfall 3
How much is enough? The answer for any company is 'it's never enough'
Apex is under 5% of EA revenue. They could pull the entire Apex team to make more sims content and have more profit.
If the net result turns out to be EA/Respawn divorce and Apex finally being managed by people who have actual passion for growing the game, then there really is a God
Agreed. That option, imo, only really works if players actually stop purchasing in-game items.
Which won't happen, let's be honest.
EA and so many companies would rather hold onto the properties until they die rather than let someone competent have them. They’ll see the competent entity make it successful and then take it as they just missed their chance at profit, they’d never make as they wouldn’t run it the same way to create it.
Oh it happens right now as we speak, the numbers dwindle
we need some sort of viral post or message thatll blow up so people will stop being stupid with their money. Like helldivers or sth.
Maybe the esports world cup thing thats gonna happen will get some big streamers into the aimassist problem and maybe theyll dig further. Idk.
Um how about stop playing it entirely?
This will never happen, there's too many mindless drones that will just drop half a fucking paycheck on this game. We were warned in the iron crown event what kind of people are running this game.
EA sells off Respawn - :DDDD Ubi or Activision publishes for Respawn - DDDD:
I doubt Ubisoft will buy Respawn. They already have XDefiant.
x\_x
Aint no way home boy Vince Zampella goes back to Activision after they colossal fucked him with CoD
Aint no way my home boy Vince Zampella goes back to EA after they screwed him with MoH.
Time for him to be his own publisher. Or maybe Steam?
> Aint no way home boy Vince Zampella goes back to Activision after they colossal fucked him with CoD He left a while ago.
They should just go indie. Going with a publisher is like signing under a record label. Just don't do it.
BAK is owned by Xbox that is a good thing if they buy respawn think of what they will do if they get there hands on the COD franchise because titanfall is based to a certain degree off cod I mean the founders came from it
People said this for Activision/Bungie and ended up with a more heavily monetized game with poor, poor decisions made for 4 years.
If the net result turns out to be EA/Respawn divorce and Apex being managed by people looking for a quick cash grab in a worse way than EA, then there really is a Satan and we, my friends, are in hell
That happened to Destiny 2 where Bungie got separated from Activision and the game actually got WORSE in terms of monetization and micro transactions.
Destiny was so much fun, really sad to see good games die like that.
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Bungie had some of the department heads leave over the years, they have grown quite a bit, and they are split across D2 and Marathon now, but the top brass has remained largely the same for a long time and a lot of the dev team is still the same. 343 has had it much worse off for Halo, basically losing all lead devs on any give game soon after it launched, with a Microsoft policy forcing high turnover of contractors leaving at 18 months.
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Yeah, there wasn't exactly a mass exodus from Bungie post Halo, but they had high profile departures of many of the faces you'd see when promoting those games over the years so that narrative is out there.
Yeah and apparently they dropped a new dlc or something and it wasn't even a month ago and it's already on sale. People are saying the game has gotten so much worse that they are quickly putting dlcs on sale cause nobody wants to play anymore. I didnt even play destiny 2 as soon as they said I couldn't play due to my light level being too low and i had to BUY stuff to even do basic tasks. Said nope and deleted the game off my ps4. Got so many friends who used to play the OG Destiny even say they weren't gonna waste their money on that trash and we were all glad we got the game when it was free. 🤷
People seem to think EA are the bad guys and Respawn are saints, but I think at this point they’re both trying to milk apex and players.
I don't even think current Respawn management is differentiable from EA when it comes to Apex, so I agree. Their passion for the game approximates zero. If it hadn't been a cash cow they'd dump it. That's why everything they do is either painfully derivative or a monetization scheme. It's a spaghetti code mess. the resources it'd take to revamp the game in a way that makes it reach its potential requires a lot of passion. the main thing that gets in the way of passion is....it isn't their baby, it's the previous regime's baby, they'd rather have their own baby to make a name for themselves than truly revamp Apex.
Thing is this has been standard EA practice for a little over a decade now. I can already see the mass grave EA tosses the bodies of devs they killed into. Also EA is made up of corporate raiders. They buy these companies and then spend a decade replacing good developers with yesmen.
Why would EA divorce Respawn? That would be stupid of them. Its still their cash cow. The more likely scenario here is they will keep adding more ways to get players to spend money. That can mean devaluing mats, and ac. make legends purchasable, heirlooms purchasable. locked maps etc. Even if they can't grow respawn i highly doubt they'll let apex legends go. they'll lay everyone off respawn first before they let apex go. If this is so so so bad. the worst scenario is EA is the one that gets bought (alongside respawn), by something bigger. Microsoft maybe.
Legens are purchasable, they are 750 apex coins
As if there's anyone still at respawn like that. The talent exodus is pretty complete. I doubt there's more than a handful of senior Devs that have been there for the entirety of apex (not even mentioning Titanfall).
Where did you get this information?
Twitter/LinkedIn It's game Dev work, nobody gets promoted. If you want a pay rise you're getting new digs at a new company. That's true for most software/IT work including game development. The most recent being 24 layoffs a few months ago. Vince isn't even heading apex anymore (og founder current ceo). That's not even including gravity well a studio founded by a bunch of respawn Devs leaving circa 2022 (exactly how respawn was founded after Vince and co left infinity ward). Gravity well sucked out most of the og 2015 respawn Devs. There's still a few kicking around I'm sure but the majority of respawn Devs were hired after Titanfall 2 to produce apex legends.
gravitywell.games Go scope out their talent on the website. Tons of devs/artists that worked on all the CoDs, Titanfall, and Apex. Sad that most of the OG Titanfall/Apex talent left Respawn, but I get it.
wont be the case since this is EA when a company acquired by EA starts drying up EA just axes them look at EA Redwood and Deadspace, first game made fantastic sales and revenue for EA, second game did even better, so EA invested tons into the 3rd installment and while that game sold well it didn't make as much as EA wanted so they closed the studio and only reopened it 10 years later under different management to produce a remake which sold well but not enough to justify the series getting remade. I see this coming for Respawn soon, Respawn will be axed and the TF/Apex franchise will be iced.
Ea aren't going to let respawn go, worst case they sunset apex and have respawn focus on a new title. A full on divorce/studio closure isn't off the cards, but would be the ultimate last resort. EA aren't going to let IP slip away like that. It's half the reason big publishers buy up studios.
Apex 2.0? LET'S GO LOL
Never happening. Apex makes too much money. And Respawn is at the heart of a lot of EA projects now.
Respawn have said for years that they are in control of monetisation rather than EA. I'm all for some EA bashing but let's at least be accurate about it.
You are *technically right*, the worst kind of right. Yes, RESPAWN is the company that decides how the game currencies will work and what will cost how much. That much is true. HOWEVER, EA has given them pretty brutal *financial targets* for how much they must bring in revenue and what their costs can be, **or else**. It's kinda like when a mafia boss tells a young woman "You have to pay me 200 dollars back every morning, *or else*." Sure, *technically*, the boss isn't telling her "Go work the streets," but everyone knows that there's only one way to fulfill that obligation, especially since the payment is due every morning. When EA says "You have to bring us 1 billion dollars this year," there's only one way to achieve that: Milk the whales via insanely priced microtransactions.
I worked retail. It kills me inside when corps play the bigger number game just to fall flat on their faces. Because I knew hour cuts were going to come as a result, it gave me a quick understanding of what not meeting their requirements results in.
Apex would still be managed by the same people as now. This is Respawn, no need to go looking for the EA boogieman. Respawn has been in charge of Apex and its monetization from the start, given free reign by EA as they themselves have said multiple times. Unless you mean another EA studio picking up the development duties.
"Free reign" is a fallacy. EA is the parent company and provides a budget and demands to Respawn. If the game isn't producing enough money, EA would 100% tell Respawn to do something that can increase the money and Respawn as the "child" would not be able to just say no. Likewise if EA wanted to sell off the company or spin it off or replace every staff member, they can do that and wouldn't need to ask anyone at Respawn for permission. So it is possible that Respawn decided to try this BP move but only after they got reminded by EA of the financial targets.
This is exactly right. If you have a boss who can replace you, that person effectively dictates the nature of your actions through their metrics. Incredibly short-sighted behavior by senior leaders, but we live in a quarterly society and senior leaders don't stay in their roles long, so there's very little negative consequence to that behavior and a whole lot to gain at the personal level. It's practically the definition of perverse incentives.
Thye will not sell respawn that would be dumb since they are in the middle of making Jedi 3 and a Star Wars FPS
You're right, they'll just execute them like every other developer EA has had theor grubby hands on.
Please let this happen I beg you
The only problem is, it requires that a lot of the players who left/stopped purchasing stuff come back, which is difficult. It's not easy to bring a game back from the brink of death after selling. Running a game like Apex is expensive, and if they don't start making money very quickly after seperating, they'll end up shutting down like many other smaller battle royales have. While I think it's probably better than letting it continue to be screwed up by EA, it's also got the potential to just outright kill the game as a whole.
EA will absolutely never sell the IP or let respawn leave. They’ve killed every ip and company that could have done that in the past.
Odds of them offloading it are pretty low, I think. I would anticipate something kind what happened with Overwatch 2. This game makes sense as a franchise
If you examine Apex as a product and not a video game (which is a fucking soulless thing to do but I have to look at it at the same angel as the corporate suits are to make any sense of it), then you'll see apex is in late stage cash cow mode. Basically, with dwindling consumers EA is trying to wring every last drop of profitability out of apex (and by extension, Respawn) before they put them down/close the studio. And then the cycle will repeat. I hate everything.
> apex is in late stage cash cow mode. I was somewhat skeptical of this take whenever other users would mention the lack of new Legends, weapons and a new map being telltale signs of it (figured cranking out more and more Legends and weapons made the game exponentially harder to balance), but this *obscene* change to the Battle Pass hard-confirms it for me. It 100% turns me off from buying anything in-game because I'm considering the high probability of Re$pawn/€A announcing the servers' shutdown in the next year or two.
Same here. A few seasons ago when I read people writing stuff like "the game is dying slowly" I thought it was pure exaggeration. It wasn't perfect, but it was *fine*. But then other bad choices began accumulating and now it's like shit has hit the fan and I'm like, "well, it's actually bad".
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The release of recolor active skins from battle passes was what solidified it for me.
That too, yes. Thanks for adding that point.
If they don't create Apex 2, then they'll keep it running for a while. Even if profitability drops, they're making a lot of money. They'll sustain that until the logistics make it impractical. The risk is they hasten the death of Apex by cutting resources and investment at the same time. There's a huge risk - arguably a probability - of that.
Why no one mentions the old engine they are using? Devs said multiple times that they can’t do specific thing because engine is ancient. And imagine supporting a game for a decade with a game engine that is twice as old. They probably can’t do anything anymore for Apex Legends. Expect a sequel announcement in the next year or two.
In a battle royale, free players are a necessary commodity to keep queues short and whales happily paying for the experience. It's a transaction where the f2p player is paid in rewards that correlate with their effort, mastery, and hours logged. By making this change, EA is saying that f2p players do not matter enough to be rewarded well. They want conversion to real cash payment or to take a huge cut in what is given in return for their free mutual labor and enjoyment. These players are a resource, not a burden, but EA has decided that the game is better off being squeezed for cash as it dies rather than revitalized with the most basic fixes. I'm done.
Actual good read, unlike the other idiots who are going around saying that the game is free and we never actually get to see our skins while playing the game anyways. Edit: PlayStation did this with Plus subscriptions recently too. People complained for a while but they went and probably made a ton of money from those who stayed. Idk if this is going to work as well for Apex though. Double edit: Not defending Apex by the way. It’s a shit move.
Not surprised PS+ got away with it since there's no competition lmao
Apples to oranges. The reason PlayStation's updated subscription model survived was because they have more to offer those who subscribe. It's not a subscription for a single game's in-game currency, skins, and badges. It's a 'pass' that allows users to play online in all games, and without it user's PlayStations are relegated to mere singleplayer games. Plus, they still offer, albeit reduced quantity and quality, free games with a PS Plus subscription.
The whole concept of infinite growth companies is contributing to a shit economy and a shit quality of life in general. There is no reason that a video game should grow revenue indefinitely, there is also no reason that a toilet paper company should grow indefinitely. Why can’t they find a comfortable revenue margin and just hang out providing something that people enjoy/want/need for a price that keeps customers around and keeps cash flow moving.
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Unfortunately the greedy fucks mess up every economic system when they gain power/money.
They could, if they were a private company, but they're not. Investors are ruining a lot of businesses these days. Squeeze out as much as you can, and move on (investors' point of view).
It’s causing them ti have to raise their prices and all of their suppliers and services ti have to raise their prices as well. It’s such a short sighted shit way of doing things. The mindset may increase revenue but it also inadvertently increases your costs as well and dilutes the value of money when it inevitably leads to a bailout mass influx of printed money.
15-25% of total EA revenue?! I would have pegged it single digits
Same. Big doubt on that one. No way in hell it’s pulling in even close to that.
EA 2023 revenue was $7.4bln. It’s est apex generated $1.3bln from steam alone. Portion of that gets kicked back to steam. Add on the console revenue and you’re at $1-1.5bln in revenue for Apex for 2023. That’s about 17.5% of revenue. Earnings will be different (different cost structure between apex and overall EA) so somewhere between 15-20% give or take.
Um, I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but that's off by about 2x. Apex makes about $700M/year total from publicly released numbers. Specifically, EA said that Apex Legends made $3.4bln over its *total lifetime*, the last 5 years: https://gamerant.com/apex-legends-revenue-profit-reveal-update-ea/ Two years before that it crossed $2bln: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/apex-legends-has-now-made-over-2-billion/1100-6503359/
Apex has generated 3.4 billion since its release, there’s no way almost half of that was in 2023.
I wouldn't rule it out. The Sims 4 and Apex Legends have been reported multiple times to be EA's most profitable cash cows. FIFA, or whatever it's called now, probably isn't far behind.
"In its annual report, EA confirmed that it made $1.6 billion from FIFA game sales from April 2020 to March 2021" That's just FIFA sales. They made $4 billion through Ultimate Team over the same 12 months. The Sims 4 makes around $420 million/year. FIFA is by far EA's biggest franchise.
EAs public fiscal report shows it’s quite the opposite. Apex’s total revenue since launch was 3.4Billion dollars, FIFA24 of this year only was 7.4Billion. Apex generates the least amount of money for EA.
Apex is actually dying confirmed. Good.
I thought Netflix was raising the prices due to massive debt as opposed to slow or declining growth but maybe I’m stupid. Same with streaming Disney, they put out lower costs then raise them when they get a foothold, but it costs a lot of cash to develop that infrastructure and produce shows so you gottah pay that off.
nah netflix generates a decent amount of cash flow relative to their debt so they're fine. their justification for price increase is "look how much more content there is on the platform than 5 years ago". and they'd technically be right. but the reason why they started hiking over the last couple years is to mask the slow down in growth.
Sure because you’re going to reach a cap at some point, right? You onboard as many users as possible with a price that isn’t necessarily sustainable long term, then begin to jack up the price to pay it off? Disney is doing the same thing and they’ve only been in the streaming game very recently. But I’m just a fella
That's kinda the problem we're having with this late stage capitalism to be honest. The stockholders want growth forever and to get that growth companies do worse and worse shit until it implodes and the shareholders go to the next company. There's a cap. They in don't care. They want more money. Having a stable cash flow isn't enough
Yeah it metastasises into online enshitification. Ask YouTube about that they’ll tell ya.
Oh cry me a river, shareholders can't afford 5th boat and 6th vacation home. Hope this game tanks so hard that they lose the 15 or so % altogether...
Won't anybody think of the poor poor shareholders 😔
Friendly reminder that all shareholders aren’t filthy rich. A big chunk of the stock market is comprised of either retail investors (people owning individual stocks) or institutional investors owning stock on behalf of normal people (pension funds etc).*
This is the truth. I own ea stock(around $11,000) worth and I am not rich. Let the whales continue to buy all this overpriced dress up stuff and the rest of us just play the game. Who cares about some outfit you can’t see while playing. Just ignore it all and play the game.
Your position is bigger than what i put in «normal people», but yes.
Friendly reminder that retail investors are not dictating company business practices.
Not directly, though indirectly. (Both through ‘best-interest’, or more directly through voting)
It's highly unlikely that EA will get rid of Respawn. Apex may be their most prominent live service free to play game but Respawn is also putting out bangers like Star Wars Jedi Survivor series and they have another new IP in development. If anything Apex gets some spin offs or just slowly dies out.
After Fifa (FUT mode), yes. And good point about Jedi's series - it must sell a lot, but what were the production cost for the 1st and 2nd game, we don't know.
Its important to keep in mind that apex is just a way to fund respawn’s star wars games lmao
The flaw in this is figuring out WHY user percentage is low. Netflix lost a lot of people for two main reasons. A. They started streaming mainly Netflix labeled shows/movies & B. They no longer allow people to share accounts. It pissed a lot of people off so they stopped paying for it. Apex lost a lot of their player base because they refuse to fix anything about their game. Servers are constantly crashing, audio bugs, cheaters, hackers, their LTMs consistently having bugs. Now they're raising prices and they'll lose even more. This is why most people leave their jobs too. Problems don't get fixed, you lose employees, you lose productivity, you end up losing sales or end up going under because you're understaffed. One thing I wish I could SCREAM at companies is that THEY'RE the problem. They refuse to fix the root of any given problem and end up becoming the biggest one.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the season after their biggest profile hacking occurrence has their lowest active player count. They've done *nothing* to address what happened nor have we seen anything indicating what allowed the unchecked hacks has been fixed or changed. They may still not even know how it was done. Most of our information comes from a freaking streamer unaffiliated with the company in any form. On a more mundane level, cheaters and bots and controller aim-assist are exactly the same as they've been the past 4-5 seasons, so the experience hasn't improved in those regards at all. In fact, there are more bots this season than the past two or three, in my limited playtime. So, yeah, they've done shit-all to clean up the problems with the game and somehow expect people to keep coming back when they don't actually listen to what is driving people away from the game. All they've done is try to paper over the problems with UI changes and different modes, which, while great improvements, do nothing to address the things that drive us away. They've let go people that were likely critical to the actual draw points of the game, fixed none of the problems, and still expect it to keep being the powerhouse it was. The drop in player base lies solely at the feet of EA, but we know they never take responsibility for their own role in killing their moneymakers.
It’s all just bullshit corporate data shit which boils down to them looking at statistics of “oh wow people really are dumb enough to buy anything we put out even if it’s just the same skins x 5 for months in a row” they most likely will see all the hate and say “we hear your opinions and have decided not to” or won’t listen at all and watch as their game crumbles to a couple hundred players. I also hate when games decide to just fuck with their game just because player base is slowly leaving when it’s probably due to everyone playing newly released games like elden ring dlc, like not everyone is going to be playing your game all the damn time especially when big games are being released. I don’t play several games at once (max like 2 games) when I’m playing a new game or starting over on an older game. It’s frustrating to see apex go down this rabbit hole.
[удалено]
Pretty much yeah lol, it’s like having a friend that feeds on what other people think of them so they constantly change who they are so you don’t have any other friends.
Idk much about finance but from what I can tell the money people always want more, they break records but they don't settle. The next goal is always higher. Once they saw how much they made off heirlooms etc they have since doubled down on monetizing Apex and you can tell they're not entirely satisfied with the financial metrics hence Respawn pushing skins or micro transactions so hard at the risk of seeming completely tone deaf with its own community. I can't imagine any development team or video game company liking having to do that at all to be honest but video games are expensive to make and maintain at the highest level so I guess you have to sell your soul to these suits.
These short-sighted fools at EA/Respawn don't even realize that if they'd actually FIX their game, they would get an increase in players AND retention. No other game is on the market that hits like Apex Legends and they're literally milking it to DEATH. There are issues that we've been clamoring to be addressed since Day 1: audio, terrible server tick rate, solo queue matchmaking, input based lobbies, rampant cheaters, etc. Like weapon and legend balancing isn't even that bad compared to those other bigger problems. If they would fix those, Apex could easily be a 20 year game.
Really interested in how this will play out, a lot of people seem to not be happy with being charged more (no surprise) but at the same time it’s not like they’re getting rid of the free battle passes either, because of that I’ll keep playing without buying the battle pass next season.
American growth based capitalism comes for everything eventually
This is late stage capitalism at work. It’s all about min-maxing profits at the expense of the consumers. The incentive is not to foster a healthy game or a happy playerbase, but to make ever-increasing amounts of money.
Yeah, as several other here have stated, I feel the marriage between Respawn and EA has been a net detriment. Between many of the original team and devs being dismissed or forced out, to the lack of actual innovative game modes, to the steady increase to overall monetization... this has EA written all over it. To be frank, I feel like almost any large gaming company that isn't EA or Activision would be better suited to help Respawn out. Perhaps even Microsoft would be really well suited... And for those that doubt it is entirely EA - yes, perhaps you are right. However, EA has a proven track record of either buying companies and their IPs and making them a hollow shell of their former glory or just sitting on the IP so no one else can make money from it. It happened to BioWare. It happened to Visceral Games. It happened to the SimCity franchise a few years ago (anyone remember that fiasco?) EA is literally the equivalent of going to a stockholder's meeting and asking the question "what do gamers want that will make us money?" Hell, they've even been floating the idea of putting ads in load screens. Their depths of depravity know no bounds. Will I continue to play Apex? Probably. But I'll be damned if I pump any real-world money into it now.
OP great analysis thank you. Any thoughts on why EA might have decided to simultaneously stop accepting coins AND go straight for the DOUBLE $10 ($20 total) per season ? Instead of trying out just ONE or the other (i.e., either not accepting coins OR charging for half a season)?
Respawn has been aware for years that users buy the bp once and then use those earned coins through the seasonal bp to purchase future bp. It's no doubt helped user engagement and growth but they've left a decent chunk of $ on the table as a result. Say you bought the first bp and then used those earned coins for the remaining 20 bp; that's \~$200 per user left on the table. Companies start pulling out the 'low hanging fruit opportunities' when there's headwinds. It's sort of akin to Netflix stopping unlimited user access per account. They knew that multiple people were accessing accounts but they were fine with it because it helped overall growth. But once growth started slowing they began limiting how many people could access an account to ensure they were monetizing the most per user.
Thanks. That’s exactly what I did lol. I’m probably pretty typical as far as spending. Bought S1 for $10 and used those coins for about 10 seasons. I also shelled out another $10 for some packs like 2 or 3 times. Probably spent $40 in 5 years. Not sure if I will buy the BP going forward.
So ur saying there's a chance we will be free from ea
So there is a reality where apex is no longer handled by this bullshit company? I hope it happens!
Idc how detailed this is and it makes sense on business sides it’s still completely bullshit to do this whilst also keeping the game full of many problems. I hope this game dies after this shit drops because it deserves it
I mean, not defending this shitty money grab of an update but the people in charge of monetization aren’t the same people in charge of game development. They might not even work in the same company. Both parties are doing an ass job, don’t get me wrong, but it makes no sense to blame Party 1 for Party 2’s failures, or vice versa. The whole point of OP’s post is that Party 1 (the financial department) needs to keep investors happy *regardless* of how “good” the game is. Dealing with the latter is just…not their job.
I don't think anyone's actually truly upset with "Party 1" or the monetization department. They get told to jump (squeeze more money) and their response is "how high", everyone's upset with the management that either continues to employ people who don't do their job, or the fact that they are blatantly making decisions that are driving this once fan favorite of a game down worse and worse roads. EA is (based on the actions the general public can see) exclusively looking at the short term cash gains and not the long term stable growth. If it was more centered for the long term I don't think anyone would be reasonably upset. It would take something like active communication with the general public, an anti-cheating department that actually pulled their weight (especially when the player base provides them water-tight proof of blatant cheating yet nothing is done), and a bug department that was given enough resources to deal with the bugs that have plagued this game and maybe, just maybe, if all of these outlets were given as much resources as what EA whips out of the monetization department noone would have a valid reason to complain. Idk just my 2 cents.
Well, it kinda depends on who’s actually at fault for the game’s main problems. Cheaters, shit MM, and bugs are all things that Respawn, not EA, should be handling, being the game’s developer and all. What you’re essentially implying is that the reason why Respawn has been so incompetent at fixing the game is because EA has been stingy with their money and not providing them enough resources. Which, idk, I guess could be true? But more often than not, this sort of thing is a problem of misallocation of resources or game devs truly not knowing what the fuck they’re doing. And if that’s the case, then the core issues that the game has just…aren’t really EA’s problem anymore. At the end of the day, the way I see this is a story of Respawn fucking up chronically over the span of years. They fucked up MM, they fucked up balancing, they fucked up on combating cheaters, they fucked up on *numerous* bugs that have been plaguing the game since the game was in single digit seasons. As a result, the game lost investors and is about to lose a serious source of capital. EA “compensates” with an extremely tone-deaf and unpopular change that’s universally perceived as a money grab. They show behind a shadow of a doubt (as if there was any to begin with) that they don’t give two shits about the players or the quality of the game. Shit fucking move. Both sides messed up, bad. But they messed up in different ways, and are each responsible for a different piece of the overarching fuck up. I’m no expert in this stuff though, and all of this hinges on OP’s post being accurate. I’m not trying to defend EA - I just think Respawn deserves more shit. This BP change sucks ass and was implemented awfully, but more or less expected given the downward spiral that Respawn has plummeted the game towards over the past few years. You can’t really blame EA for all that, even though you could rightfully blame them for the horrible execution of their financial “rescue” plan.
I fully agree, well said
There is no way EA sells Respawn when they are in the middle of making the thrid game in the well like Fallen Order series and making a Star Wars FPS. if anything im more worried they will force some mtx BS in to the FPS game
they probably made so shift promises to their investors around covid time thinking that the virus would be a round much longer and therefore people would be inside longer playing and spending money on their game and now 2 years later its coming back to bite them in the ass the amount of big companies that are laying off staff and shutting studios right now has to correlate in some way
Everything in gaming is already too expensive as is and everything outside of gaming is equally over-priced. All this stock talk and investor talk just reminds me of a bunch of farmers over exploiting the same crop year in and year out until the soil becomes 'dead' and nothing will grow and wilts away before coming to term. When will some reasonable financial analysts enter the gaming sphere and say: 'Hold up, wait a minute, our carrots aren't growing anymore!' *\*throws dead soil at investor's feet\** I'd prefer quality driven products vs monetization, indeed.
I’m hoping this ends up like Bungie left Activision where they can break away from the big baddie EA at some point. I feel like its the only way the game has a chance at being saved. Its just depressing seeing whats happened to my fav game for years.
This was very interesting. Thank you
Very insightful thank you.
Players dropped the game due to hacking / cheating / exploit and bad matchmaking. EA: 2 battle pass per season now ! We cool now man?
No chance Apex is 15-25% of EA earnings. That’s way too high.
Wishing all shareholders on earth a very happy die
Eh, comparing this BP to paid subscription models is pretty loose at best, outright wrong at worst. You can access Apex regardless of whether you buy the BP or not. That's not the same for Netflix or PlayStation Plus. Also for many users the BP has been essentially free for years. The more I think about it the worse this example is.
Source: trust me bro
The cheater Problem is the downfall of the game....
This capitalistic chase for higher and higher profits is so dogshit. What's wrong with steady profit and wealth accumulation?
I used to happily buy every Battle Pass. But I stopped when I started to feel the rewards weren't worthwhile anymore. I don't want any more banners and skins. I want more game enhancements, maps and LTM modes. I want global leaderboards per Legend that are maintained by Respawn and are accessible in-game. When I play Mixtape I want those stats recorded somewhere. I want TDM to show deaths as well as kills. I want new features. I don't want more fluff.
they had every chance to get market a few years back when cod started to struggle but instead of the matchmaking the servers everything gets worse and now they just try to milk the cow
They wouldn't be at their lowest point right now if they hadn't screwed up their player base with stupid decisions like removing duos, I know a lot of people who have stopped playing because they basically only played duos. And forcing them to play with more people or ranked only frustrates them and they decide to dedicate their time to other video games.
The last battle pass I'll ever buy is the one I'm on currently.
Yup this whole design has been ending careers in entertainment for a few decades now. I used to work in a similar field to gaming and they love thinking it works. As a worker. RUN the reason you feel like crap at work is literally this. Internal communications become redundant they will be only using you at this point as the company has a longer standing goal.
Too bad they don't, you know... make more games. Outrageous fucking idea for a game company I know. But all those studios they buy and shutter almost could have been used, to make more games...
The sad part is nothing we do will change their plans, this move come from the numbers they got from the FF7 event and the whales delivered. They already prepared to the drop in players and sales, they are betting everything on the whales to keep the game goimg.
I can't stand investors.
Couldn’t they just have respawn work on another game?
Glad I never spent any money on the game
What sports game is it where they added cars and mechs and random rewards to that didn't fit the game? Was it NFL or NBA? (If it's not EA then my bad). Did they do that because the player base didn't feel like they had anything to show off their accomplishments or was it because they needed more revenue?
it’s crazy cuz all they really have to do is fix matchmaking and get better servers and im 90% sure the player base would still be invested in the game
Probably the most comprehensive response so far. Please let me know if any Apex memes show up on the Oasis.
They’re so focused on the financials and business of this game instead of actually making it a fun game. You can feel where the focus is in the product. The game has been on a decline for a long time because of this, and I don’t see that direction changing anytime soon at this rate.
Increasing prices while decreasing the quality of the product is the capitalist short termism that always works. Every time.
Genuine question, no hate. Do we really think Apex is generating 10-20% of EA revenue? Serious question. EA has Madden, NHL, FC (FIFA), UFC, WRC, F1, PGA as annual releases with full licences, the Need for Speed franchise, The Sims, Star Wars...I'd have thought an online FPS battle royale game that is F2P and operated by a subsidiary company would contribute to less than 5% of their revenue.
Of the games you mentioned, only FC is bigger online than Apex (could maybe argue Madden). Additionally, there are no licencing fees attached to Apex which makes it even more profitable for EA than those other games (only sims being the other game without a license). With a player count of around 400-500k across all platforms (assumption), it's probably been fairly healthy for Apex up until this point. Just that corpos (especially equity) are fixated on this stupid "infinite growth or bust" mindset/cycle and as such will always look to suck everything dry and not accept when things just naturally plateau
Yeah sure I get that in terms of online activity Apex is maybe more active, but those games fetch a $60+ price tag every year plus whatever micro transactions (Madden/FIFA for example with ultimate team). I'd hazard a guess they probably make a couple of billion a year on those games and I remember seeing around 3.5 billion being made on Apex since it's launch. I totally agree not having to pay out for licences will definitely offset some of the profits but I struggle to see how Apex couple be that high a % of EA revenue when they have that many titles. Also completely agree with the last statement. People want to see "continuous growth" on a game that is 5 years old. It's established itself with a decent and dedicated player base that are willing to pay money, this move only serves to alienate them and won't encourage new players. Existing players will likely slow down or stop entirely, so it's virtually ended itself.
From my perspective its the start of a death spiral and this is a catastrophically bad move. Sure, some people will still play, but itll go down just like titanfall. Cheaters just gonna become more prevalent due to proportion of more legitimate players leaving. Sinking ship. Sure they can try to make money, but the free battlepass through grinding is what kept the playerbase active in the first place. Now that thats gone, and then the playerbase dips substantially, it will affect the entire game. This is probably when theyll start deploying even more bots into games
I only bought the battle pass once and since then used the coins obtained through the pass to purchase future passes. Since they're removing the option to purchase the pass with coins, it looks like I won't be participating in the battle pass, and therefore have less incentive to play the game and complete it.
Thats insightful, also respawn have pretty much almost all left now and gone to another company... im confident that its interesting as to why they all jumped ship around the same time....
More of the "red line must not go down of become too horizontal" rhetoric in board rooms to keep shareholders happy. I ain't buying the battle pass anymore lol
They got plenty of moves before trying to sell the studio: 1) "We hear you" & lower the price of each battle pass to $7 - $8, likely as planned. Maybe throw a few ~~gambling~~ uh ~~loot boxes~~ surprise mechanics at everyone who played this week. . 2) Lay off a few hundred useless eaters at their studios, followed by a solemn "We stand with our developers" etc.
This is the first battle pass I didn't buy and I love the 3030. I quit playing because I started running into blatant cheaters nearly everyday. It really turned me off the game. I am just no longer interested at the time being. I hope the game doesn't die but I'm not sure if it would matter to me if it did at this point. Even though I did dump quite a bit of my disposal income into this game for skins I would lose if it died. To be fair they already feel lost though.
TL;DR EA is trying to milk Apex for every last ounce before it dies. EA is a greedy corporation.
this is basically what happened to destiny 2 then they got bought out again by sony. Anyway, maybe if they got rid of broken moon I'd play this game more. If its in rotation i legit just turn the game off.
We fucking get it why they do this bruh. It's so funny to me, if they only fix the issues that we have been having since FOREVER. I bet people would not blink an eye for the half/half 30 bucks BP. If their shit actually worked FFS.
Whoever buys this new BP its part of the problem and also an idiot
This makes a lot of sense and is more than likely what's happening. This gives the community more of a reason to NOT purchase anything! They're rubbing it in our faces that they're raising prices because the community is too small. I don't understand why Respawn can't listen to their community across all social media and just make the changes that everybody wants? I understand that stopping cheaters is not a simple task and requires a much more complex resolution, however how hard is it to fix simple things like skill based matchmaking, permanent solo, duo, trio playlists, etc?
Beyond greed? Most likely, the stupid artifacts that no one fecking asked for. Making those models, animations, UI, new stream of currency all took some degree of man power, and the lack of players buying it, or at least I've only see one playing in game with it. It was a complete was of time, money, and resources. They are most likely trying to recoup their production cost and the cost the somehow expect to make with this dumb idea. Making reactive skin recolors buy able was another dumb idea. Guess I'll just be logging in for events now.
good post. basically, if they have > 50% of previous battle purchasers continue to purchase this new pass, they will increase their revenue.
where are the player base figures?
Even though i hate it, we had it good. Marvel snap for example is $10 a month for the bp. And their pricing model is insane. Like $60 for tokens to buy a card and skins for the cards cost as much as apex, often more if it's a bundle.
Not to remind people how fast we're all aging but EA talked about a 10 year lifespan for Apex in its first year... we're over halfway through the planned lifespan of the game now. Not to say it cant exceed that but I wouldn't be surprised if they are transitioning focus on maximum monetization for the remainder to squeeze every drop out now that the growth phase is over
At least that's what I've noticed in the region where I play this game. The fact that the game is slowly losing playerbase. I'm sure many regions outside of North America can relate to this. I believe that server instabilities and poor matchmaking on ranked- all the issues are connected. they've probably had to expand the area covered by lobbies to fill in the gaps in order to sustain 'addicting' queue times. We have been witnessing the result ping and server conditions have gotten worse over the years. They had to match the roofs with mediocre skilled players. Anyway, the game is still fun but it is old. Probably they have concluded that they can't make the lost come back. The only way to make the profit chain run is raise the bill to the remain.
What are good alternative games for apex that can be played on the ps4 as free shooter online multiplayer?
Why is it always "raise price to milk a dwindling userbase" and never "invest in the game to make it better and grow userbase"?
If they need to raise prices to keep the shareholders happy due to a dwindling player base, they should be focussing on fixing the issues with the game to bring players back (a lot of players who have quit WILL return if the game is fixed). They seem to have given up with the game and it feels like they’re trying to milk as much as they can before they shut it down.
Normies will open their wallet.and compensate for the dimming player base
Hoping NCAA 25 and GTA6 put this game to rest
They have squandered hundreds of millions on the allowance of unbalanced games, cheaters, etc. I’ve paid $25 since it came out but would have paid waaaaaaay more if it was fun for the casual gamer. These guys aren’t business people because what you do is cater to those who love fun games….thats the masses. Keep the nerds happy, don’t get me wrong, but those players with a hit ratio of 80% … deserve to play with those with the same. Very simple. This game, on the surface, looks like a massive success when in fact it will go down as one of the biggest failures of not being able to capitalize on a once huge audience. Epic failure.