Season one of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is here, but fans are upset that one of the battle pass features has been massively downgraded from previous games. Call of Duty is one of the biggest video game franchises on the planet and is generates billions upon billions of dollars every year. Not only are the actual releases massively successful, often times topping the yearly sales charts despite releasing in the last two months of the years, but they also rake in tons of money on in-game transactions. There are tons of skins, bundles, and of course, the almighty battle pass. Call of Duty used to monetize itself through map packs and loot boxes, but eventually dropped that in favor of something that incentivizes more engagement: the battle pass.
The battle pass is a system that allows players to pay about $10 and they’ll get a seasonal pass that allows them access to a ton of in-game items like skins, XP rewards, weapons, and more. The catch is that you either have to pay to advance to the next tier (often 100 tiers) or play the game and grind a lot to complete the battle pass before it expires. It’s a win win for the publisher as people either spend all their time in the game or a lot of their money. However, if fans do complete the battle pass in Call of Duty, they usually get enough Call of Duty Points to buy the next one for free. It’s a great reward for those who play Call of Duty non-stop and while that’s still the case with Black Ops 6, there is one big downside.
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With previous Call of Duty games, the battle pass usually gave you enough to buy the next battle pass and left players with an extra 300 Call of Duty points that they could put towards something in the store such as a cool skin. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, however, only lets players get enough points for the battle pass as there are only 1,100 worth of bonus COD Points in the season one battle pass. Fans have not taken this news lightly with the launch of season one and have taken to calling Activision greedy on social media for not being able to spare what is otherwise less than $5 worth of Call of Duty points to those who spend dozens of hours grinding out the battle pass. It’s unclear why this decision was made, but it seems like more people will be playing Black Ops 6 than previous Call of Duty games because of its availability on Xbox Game Pass. Therefore, it seems likely spending will go up as many people didn’t invest $70 in the game on day one.
Of course, it’s possible that with enough fan feedback, Activision will bring back these bonus COD Points in season two of Black Ops 6. Either way, it’s a bummer that this is the direction the publisher is taking, especially given the game itself has been received so positively. It’s a franchise that already generates so much money, it’s hard to imagine those extra Call of Duty Points actually hurt anyone in the grand scheme of things.