Respawn Responds To Apex Legends Loot Box Controversy

Even though it’s been out for a few months now, it looks like Apex Legends is still going through some growing pains. Earlier this week, developer Respawn Entertainment kicked off the Iron Crown event, which finally saw the introduction of a solos mode, for those who prefer to venture through Kings Canyon on their own as opposed to working alongside two other teammates.

Still, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for everyone. Aside from the fact that Respawn has some work to due with regards to servers and netcode, a vocal group of fans has been expressing their displeasure over the way new loot boxes are structured. For those who aren’t familiar, here’s a bit of a rundown.

The new event came with two dozen new cosmetic items, which can only be unlocked by purchasing Iron Crown packs. On the plus side, there are no chance at duplicates, but unfortunately, only two boxes can be unlocked through gameplay.

This means that those who are looking to get every skin will need to shell out over $150 – even if you’re only on the hunt for one item, you’ll likely need to spend some cash to find it. Thankfully, it seems like Respawn has heard the complaints and has decided to tweak things moving forward.

As reported by ComicBook.com, starting on August 20th, the in-game store will begin stocking and rotating through each of the 12 legendary, event-exclusive cosmetic items. Unfortunately, though, you’ll only have one week to buy them, and it looks like the other 12 epic drops won’t be included.

Here’s the announcement in question, as posted on Reddit by Respawn’s community manager.

Hey everyone,

At launch we made a promise to players that we intend to do monetization in a way that felt fair and provided choice to players on how they spent their money and time. A core decision during development of Apex Legends was that we wanted to make a world class battle royale game – in quality, depth, progression, and important for today’s conversation – how we sell stuff. With the Iron Crown event we missed the mark when we broke our promise by making Apex Packs the only way to get what many consider to be the coolest skins we’ve released*.*

We’ve heard you and have spent a lot of time this week discussing the feedback and how we structure events in the future, as well as changes that we will make to Iron Crown. To get right into it, here are the changes we are making:

• Starting on 8/20, we’ll be adding and rotating all twelve of the event-exclusive Legendary items into the store over the course of the final week of the event for the regular Legendary skin cost of 1,800 Apex Coins. You will still be able to purchase Iron Crown Apex Packs for 700 Apex Coins if you choose. The store schedule for the week will be as follows:
• For future collection events, we will provide more ways to obtain items than just buying Apex Packs.

We’re glad to see that Respawn has finally addressed the ongoing controversy, but we’re wondering if it’s a case of too little too late at this point.

What are your thoughts, though? Have you been content with the new Apex Legends loot boxes, or do you think they should be retooled to resemble something closer to Overwatch, for instance? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!