Battle pass / season pass

What you're actually buying

A pass for a limited season (ten weeks in Fortnite's first one) that unlocks a ladder of cosmetic rewards as you play. You pay about $10 up front, then earn back what you paid with your evenings. Miss the deadline and you lose what you paid for, unless you pay again to skip ahead.

How it works

The battle pass fixed the loot box's optics: no randomness, and every reward is shown in full before you buy. What it sells instead is a calendar. A pass has a set window, and its rewards unlock as you complete matches and daily and weekly challenges, which are tuned to get you back before the timer runs out. If you fall behind, 'buy levels' shortcuts let you pay to skip tiers, selling back the hours the pass demands. The deadline is the product more than the reward: you are no longer gambling with money, you are spending your free time. The model has also spread to paid games, so even a game you already bought can ask for your time.

When it's fine

When you would play that much anyway, the rewards are only cosmetic, and falling behind costs nothing you care about.

Where it came from

Valve needed to fund The International's prize pool without publisher cash, so in 2013 Dota 2's Compendium let fans buy straight into the pot, a quarter of every sale climbing live on screen. Fortnite finished the idea in December 2017 (Chapter 1, Season 2): about $10 (950 V-Bucks) for cosmetic tiers visible in full before you bought, unlocked over ten weeks. Fortnite's 2018 revenue is reportedly around $5 billion, mostly from the pass and the shop. Call of Duty adopted the model with Modern Warfare's Season One pass in December 2019, and Rocket League's Rocket Pass, Apex Legends and Halo Infinite followed, most selling paid tier skips to buy back lost time. Rocket League shows the pass works even in a game you have already bought, because it puts a time limit on content after the sale. The timing mattered: Fortnite's no-randomness pass arrived weeks after the Star Wars Battlefront II loot box backlash, and Belgium's loot box ruling followed in April 2018. The pass kept the countdown and dropped the dice.

Historical prices and revenues are in US dollars at the time unless marked A$.