Gameloft’s game had an item that could be earned by simply playing Disney Speedstorm; to change that after six seasons to a paid item seems like a very greedy move and one that the public is criticizing.
The game’s battle pass is called the Golden Pass. Previously, it could be purchased with tokens that could also be earned by simply playing the game. A change has been made: the Golden Pass can now only be purchased with real money and costs $/€10 (or $/€20 if you skip the first 15 levels). Gameloft says this change will keep players more engaged and make the Golden Pass faster to complete. 83% of the audience will not reach level 50, and the later in the season you start, the lower that percentage will be.
Therefore, the amount of XP required will be halved until level 49, and the repeatable level of the Golden Pass will gradually increase. The season will be split in two and last one month each, so there will be TWO Golden Passes per season, so you will need to spend at least 20€ per month to play the game if you want all the premium content! On Reddit, this has been criticized by quite a few people, and some say that the characters are locked behind the Golden Passes, so you have to spend twice as much money per season to get all the characters.
Disney Speedstorm has been in Early Access for a year now, and there are players who have accumulated a lot of tokens to get their Golden Passes. Gameloft has actively promoted this: four of them can be bought with the initial 4,000 tokens that could be bought, leaving 400 tokens after that. The Xbox and PlayStation Stores use a more eloquent definition, explaining that tokens are a currency that can be used to purchase Golden Passes, which can (also) be earned through gameplay. Gameloft’s customer support website also states that tokens can be used to unlock the premium segment of Golden Passes within a season. This is still the case as Season 7 has not yet started (it will start in April).
There have been many negative reviews on Steam about this, and this is not the first time Gameloft has done this. In October, just before its launch, Disney’s Dreamlight Valley switched from a free-to-play model to a paid one…
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