Apex Legends has rolled out a new event, Iron Crown, featuring exclusive cosmetic items obtainable through loot boxes. However, since these new loot boxes are expensive and players can open most of them only through real-world cash, many in the community are furious.
Just a few hours after Iron Crown went live, players turned to the Apex Legends subreddit and other social media platforms to let Electronic Arts and developer Respawn Entertainment know that the pay wall they set was way too high.
Out of the 24 loot boxes the event offers, only two can be unlocked purely through in-game means. The rest have to be paid for. Each one of these boxes costs players 700 Apex Coins, which translates to $7 per box. Only players that open at least 22 boxes are eligible to get Raven’s Bite, an exclusive melee weapon for Bloodhound. That would equate to $154 in Apex Coins.
However, not even those players will get the weapon for free. Once they spend enough money unlocking loot boxes, they will have to spend an additional $35 if they wish to purchase the Raven’s Bite. This means that, all together, players need to spend over $170 if they wish to fully unlock what the new event has to offer.
Even after spending more than a week’s worth of grocery bills on opening loot boxes, there is still no guarantee players will get the cosmetics they want from them. Loot drops are random, and players don’t even know what the odds of them getting a legendary item are, only that they won’t be pulling duplicates. Therefore, Apex’s developers are asking their players to gamble over $100 for a chance to grab some of the update’s exclusive content.
Needless to say, players aren’t happy about it. Since Apex Coins are purchasable in bulk sets of 1,000 coins for $9.99 as the cheapest possible option, the price for the standard loot box worth of 100 Apex Coins is $1, meaning the Iron Crown event loot is valued seven times higher.
Although the event did bring on the anticipated Apex solo mode, the community is taking a stand against the events’ monetization in hopes the developers won’t repeat this mistake again in the future.
