Exploring My Love-Hate Relationship With Season Passes

By Jason Winter, News Editor February 4, 2020

For all the “innovations” that online games have pioneered over the past few years to generate additional revenue, the one that's received probably the least disdain from gamers is the season pass. Subscriptions are on their way out, cash shops are overflowing with “cosmetic” gear, and don't get me started on loot boxes, but the season pass seems to have escaped the general ire.

As for me, I'm not mad about season passes exactly, but I find myself a little … well, in a bit of a love-hate relationship with them. I actually had never bought one before shelling out for the last season of Destiny 2. I was playing it a lot, and it was fun! I got lots of loot! And all for just 10 bucks over 2.5 months!

My play time in that game has dropped off, so I haven't bought the current season's pass, but now I'm back playing a lot of Conqueror's Blade. I started the current season late, so I won't be buying this season's pass, but I'll probably do it for next season, so I can get the extra rewards from the get-go.

Where does that leave me with Destiny 2? Sure, I'm not playing it as much as I used to, but buying that season pass would be nice for the times when I do. But then I'll be faced with the dilemma of having two season passes and trying to figure out which one I want to play more and achieve the highest rank – which is, naturally, where the best loot resides. Do I just get to level 40 in both of them? Or level 80 in one? It's easier, honestly, to simply decide that I'll focus on one game – the one I buy the pass for – and mostly ignore the other one.

Therein lies the problem. Back in the day, when everything was subscription-based, I never had a sub to more than one game per month. “I'll never play both enough to justify the expenditure,” I told myself. And it was true. When Star Wars: The Old Republic launched, I had a sub for five months (one that came with the game, three purchased, and one more given out by BioWare to account for some issues with the early game) and my playtime in The Lord of the Rings Online, where I at least had a lifetime sub and didn't need to pay monthly, diminished. If I still would have had to pay for LotRO, I don't know that I would have.

Season passes are a kind of “soft” subscription, for me at least. If I'm paying for one in one game, and not the other, I just don't think I'll play as much of the “free” game since it means I won't get maximum possible rewards in the “paid” game. And I just can't see how I'd pay for two at once. Even with their advantages – $10 for two-plus months beats the usual $15 per month subscription of other games – I just don't think I can justify shelling out for two at once.

Sure, it's a First World Problem, and it's a generally uncontroversial way for free-to-play games to make money without loot boxes or other unsavory tactics. Maybe I'm just feeling too skittish after a decade or so of having to deal with those tactics, thinking that “Sure, season passes are all right, but there has to be a downside, right? No? Here, let me invent one!”

Well, maybe there isn't, apart from the turmoil in my paranoid, cheapskate, trying-too-hard-to-optimize-my-game-time brain. So what do you think? Do you like season passes? Are you, unlike me, capable of running with more than one at a time? Or are you like me, a one-game-at-a-time player?

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In this article: The Lord of the Rings Online, star wars the old republic, Conqueror's Blade, Destiny 2.

About the Author

Jason Winter, News Editor
Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.

rickshaw 1 year ago

Game companies need to finish their games and launch them fully completed. Any further addons or creations made for that title should be given freely as it's related to that game.
Game companies should to stop wasting further time on the title when they know it is finished as from the start, a good game should be left to what it is.
Game companies need to focus primary tasks on creating their next games. :)

Metaquix 1 year ago

So obviously, as stated in the article. You should only be trying to buy a pass for games you intend to play often or a lot of. So if you're bouncing around a lot then maybe just saving your money until you decide to sink a lot of time into a game is the right choice. Secondly, a lot of games often times have ways to spend more money to move up through the pass without actually having to play. While i don't believe this is ever worth doing in terms of money to reward ratio. It is an option for someone who really wants X or Y pass item, but just doesn't have the time for it. Lastly, a lot of these will also have alternative ways to get your hands on cosmetic items. Often times selling individual cosmetic items, or even packs of them. These options also fill that niche of being someone with low time, but wants a cosmetic for the game their playing. For me, it make sense to try and get value out of the skin. For example you can compare how many hours you get out full priced single player games and then math out the dollar to hour amount. Then try to figure out how many hours of playing with said skin it would take to pretty much justify the purchase. Its a weird way of looking at it, but if you can justify a game purchase to get X or Y hours of play out of then, scaling the money and hours down to match the same rate makes sense too.