It’s just a preorder for DLC, basically, or if they’re all released it’s just a DLC bundle pack.
I have been playing video games for like 25 years already, and I have no clue. Whenever I see it, I am less inclined to purchase the game though.
Me too. When I read “season pass” my mind goes to scams and games riddled with in-app purchases. No thanks.
It’s effectively pre-order for DLC.
IE you pay us now… when we release the DLC you get it… If the DLC turns out to suck… well that’s on you, if we release a different DLC then the one we announced, and delay or downgrade all the resources from the DLC we announced, sucks to be you etc…
Bottom line, at best it’s kind of a kick starter done by companies with more than enough money to not need it.
A few answers here are mixing up season passes with battle passes.
A season pass is just a bundle of multiple pieces of DLC, often sold in advance with a schedule for when each item will release. Sometimes the contents can also be purchased individually, but buying them bundled in the pass will get you a discount. Generally this is a fair enough business model, even if the idea of preordering DLC doesn’t sit right with you, you can always wait and just buy the pass once everything is released.
A battle pass is a model found in a number of live service games. After purchasing the pass, you can grind for in-game rewards. Oftentimes there’s a deadline to finish grinding by, and once a pass is over you can no longer obtain the rewards and will have to buy the next pass for the next set of rewards. These are engagement bait to keep players grinding so that playercount remains high, and they rely heavily on FOMO, which makes them controversial. But they make a lot of money, so you’ll keep seeing them.
A tactic by big money hungry studios to get you paying every few months or weeks to get meaningless content in their games, plus access to new meaningless tasks to complete (often referred to as “dailies”) to give you a few more meaningless items in game, on top of attempting to addict you with said tasks to come back for more.
Wish I could paint it more positively, but the gaming industry is heading towards enshitification and this is a big part of it, extracting more money without providing much more content.
How can the most upvoted reply be factually wrong. You are describing a battle pass. Season pass is a dlc bundle.
Depends on the game. I’ve seen it labelled both ways.
They are things to avoid. Things that you don’t need. Gimmicks. A waste of money.
Can only explain it in examples.
Example: Fortnite, call of duty
Free to play. (Of you laid for the game)
You have a list of items that you unlock through progression/leveling up.
Season pass: a second line of extra stuff you unlock simultaneously leveling up/through progression.
Season pass stuff is usually the cooler stuff. If you don’t care about cosmetics then season passes are useless.
A bunch of games these days will release content on a regular schedule. Instead of buying it all separately, you can get a ‘season’ pass to get all of it. Alternatively, many games will offer rewards for leveling up, but they’ll have two tiers of rewards, unpaid and paid. If you buy the season pass, you’ll get both tiers of rewards. It just depends on the game.
Alternatively, many games will offer rewards for leveling up, but they’ll have two tiers of rewards, unpaid and paid. If you buy the season pass, you’ll get both tiers of rewards.
That’s a battle pass.
I mean, a lot of games still call them season passes. Destiny 2, for instance.
