The Apex Legends community had barely recovered from the battle pass drama when they noticed an emote in Season 23 that costs $18, opening the wound all over again.
Lifeline was the focus of Season 23 with the support legend getting a massive rework. She was given a brand new ultimate with a shield and her tactical now has her drone following her around, allowing Lifeline to heal herself on the go or during a team fight. While this was applauded by support players, Apex Legends fans found that not everything Lifeline in Season 23 was welcomed.
Why is a Lifeline emote going for $18?
While looking at the new cosmetics available in Season 23, one Apex Legends player went to social media to point out a shockingly expensive $18 emote for Lifeline called Start Me Up.
The emote costs 1,800 Apex Coins. 1,000 Apex Coins cost $9.99 while purchasing 2,000 Apex Coins is $19.99. Going by this conversion, it would cost the equivalent of $18 to purchase this emote. If a player had no Apex Coins to spend, they’d need to spend basically $20 to get the Start Me Up emote.
This expensive emote has the Apex Legends community in an outrage. On the Reddit thread discussing the emote, Apex Legends players urged each other not to purchase the emote while others accused them of being “greedy” and “milking” their players. It especially infuriated players due to EA’s recent earnings report.
In a financial earnings report from EA, the CEO admitted that Apex Legends was not performing as desired. EA had been hoping for a “lift in monetization” and was now thinking of “innovative” changes to increase Apex Legends’ profits.
After the unfortunate report, fans were shocked that Apex Legends would continue in this direction of charging more for microtransactions. Others expressed that they would be more willing to buy cosmetics if Respawn Entertainment lowered the costs to something they deemed fair. It’s definitely an interesting choice after such a harsh reaction to Apex Legends’ initial concept for two battle passes every season that couldn’t be purchased with in-game currency.
The team was forced to walk back on this change due to a dropped player count and a bombardment of negative Steam reviews. It definitely is a strange choice to follow up that catastrophe with an emote $18.
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