One of the most highly anticipated video games of the year is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (slated to release on Leap Year Day, Feb. 29) and as the release of it rapidly approaches, developer Square Enix is doing the usual promotional rounds to promote it.
One bit of promotional collaboration, with the popular battle royale shooter Apex Legends, may have actually soured some fans on it all.
To help boost excitement and anticipation for FF7R, Apex Legends publisher EA and Square teamed up to bring a slew of Final Fantasy 7-related items to the shooter.
This practice is common, especially in free-to-play games like Apex, but one thing about this immediately caught fans’ eyes: the pricing, which is no small issue in the current economy.
This ballyhooed collaboration introduced a number of Final Fantasy-related cosmetic items for Apex players to utilize, most notably the iconic “Buster Sword” weapon that belonged to Final Fantasy 7’s main protagonist Cloud Strife.
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To wield that comically oversized sword, however, players have just two options: Play like normal and try to unlock it that way, or pay real-life cash to unlock it.
Presenting the binary option of grinding in a game or paying for convenience is a common practice in free-to-play games, but even by those expectations, fans were a bit aghast at what Apex was “offering” players.
In short, to unlock the best cosmetic items and weapons without paying extra, a player can play normally and open up the loot boxes they normally get. The chance to pull a special Final Fantasy item from these normally obtained boxes? Less than 1 percent, according to IGN.
And yet, it’s the alternative that has most fans in a tizzy.
Do you think microtransactions are bad?
And that’s because if you don’t want to keep opening boxes with less than a percent chance to give you what you want, you can just pay roughly $290.
That price is bad enough, but the duplicitous way in which Apex Legends sells you these items also angered fans.
In short, the in-game currency you have to buy with real-world currency initially appears discounted… until you start buying more.
Per IGN, as you keep buying those discounted items, the price of the other related items slowly ticks up. According to IGN’s analysis, it would cost roughly $290 ($80 at the discounted rate, $210 at full price) to unlock all the items.
Fans were not happy with this news (it was originally reported the cosmetics would cost $360):
Apex players are pissed with the Final Fantasy collab as to get the final item death box you’d need to spend $360 💀 pic.twitter.com/ZyZbD13VNC
— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) January 8, 2024
Apex Legends is currently available to play on virtually every modern platform, including on mobile phones.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will release on Feb. 29 as a timed exclusive on the PlayStation 5. While the exclusivity is slated to end in May, according to EuroGamer, no versions for any other platforms have been announced yet.
