Before the year ends, Respawn Entertainment is squeezing in one more store sale for Apex Legends. Some of the skins featured in the sale fall on Apex’s list of rarer cosmetics, but there’s a bit of a catch.
The End of Year Sale hit the live servers today, but there are only three skins included in the sale, two of which are recolors. And while the game’s developer is marketing the sale as a prime time to spend that extra holiday cash, Apex fans have a different opinion.
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The first offering in the End of Year Sale is Loba’s Hell Bent Bundle, which is available for either 2,500 or 3,950 Apex Coins, depending on how many Apex Packs (Apex’s take on loot boxes) you want to tack on. The bundle features a colorful, paint-splattered recolor of Breaking the Law, Loba’s season 12 battle pass skin. Wattson’s Kawaii Kitty skin, a recolor of her Thunder Kitty skin, shares a similar color pattern to Hell Bent Loba and is on sale in its own bundle options with the same Apex Pack offerings.
Other options in the sale include 20 or 100 Apex Packs, each coming with weapon charms. Wraith’s Rift Stalker skin, which depicts the Void Walker in a shrouded outfit that looks straight out of Assassin’s Creed, has also returned to the store for the sale in the Sanguin Bundle.
The cheapest offering of the entire sale is the 20-Pack Bundle, featuring 20 Apex Packs at a 50-percent discount. That will still cost fans $10, but to purchase one of the three skins, players will need to cough up at least 2,500 Apex Coins. If a player doesn’t have extra Apex Coins lying around, they’ll need to spend a whopping $40 just for one skin; players can only buy the currency in bundles, and the first option that gives players enough Apex Coins to afford a 2,500-coin bundle is the $40 option, which includes 4,350 coins.
Apex’s community has long voiced its disdain for store “events” and recolors, or what are older skins in different colors that are sold to the player as new commodities. While Respawn has historically drawn the line between store events and collection events, a number of 2022 holiday events (which are typically treated as themed or collection events) brought back older skins with a fresh coat of paint, making it seem like these skins were new creations. This included the most recent Wintertide event and Halloween’s Fight or Fright celebration.
And, unsurprisingly, fans quickly picked up on the change.
“The winter re-skins were insulting, and changing the skins to a new ugly color to repackage it is so lazy,” one Apex fan wrote. “It makes me feel like George Costanza is running the art team.”
Collection events, unlike store events, typically offer more than just ways to spend cash. This type of event typically introduces new game modes, skins players can purchase with the game’s free currency, and challenges that unlock prizes for simply playing the game. This discrepancy between event types has led the Apex community to challenge Respawn’s labeling of store sales as “events,” since store events don’t introduce new content or ways to play the game.
And this End of Year event has similarly left fans unimpressed with what’s being offered.
“This games store/cosmetics has really plummeted in value the last 5-6 months in particular,” another player wrote yesterday. “Terrible cosmetics that can only be purchased outright, even during events. Weird how much this changed for the worse lately.”
Related: Season of taking: Apex Legends players call out Respawn, EA for greedy skin pricing and bundles
Apex’s End of Year Sale will end on Jan. 10, giving fans just two weeks to purchase Kawaii Kitten Wattson, Hell Bent Loba, and Rift Stalker Wraith before they’re vaulted.
