Dota 2

Horse armour

It doesnt matter since these are just options.

"first game to have battlepass" isn't really an opinion per se, it's something that definitely has a "first"

If you're asking what set the trend in this direction, sure it's just opinions, but that wasn't really the question

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Horse armor in skyrim was the first paid cosmetic found in a game. Not quite a battle pass but it was definitely the precursor that started it

They said option, not opinion.

Oblivion. Not Skyrim.

Incorrect, even crossfire in 2007 had paid cosmetics actually, its much older problem than skyrim.

Hans Landa saying "Whoo, that's a Bingooo!"

Oblivion came out in 2006. Still a moot point, OP never asked about a single cosmetics, just an entire BP

True, i am not sure what the first BP was, just know cosmetics is older than skyrim so dropped a reply. Oldest BP i remember was maybe PUBG, but im unsure.

I started way before Fortnite was even in development.

DOTA2 introduced the battle pass in 2013. Valve added a battle pass to TF2 a couple years later

Season passes had been around for a couple years — starting in 2011 with L.A. Noire.

Fortnite adopted battle passes in Season 2, which started in December of 2017. Wikipedia notes that the season 3 battle pass (February 2018) brought in over 50 million dollars in a single day.

You are sort of right in thinking it was Fortnite.

All it did was popularize it to a large audience and demonstrate how lucrative it was. Not to mention, it isn't terribly implemented in Fortnite, so that helped.

Yeah Fortnite is the first one I at least saw it be present in, I know it goes back even earlier, but it made it popular, at least it worked though since it was a free to play game, once games started making you pay for it, on top of making you pay for the game already, it became more annoying, like Black Ops 4 had a battle pass, but it didn’t cost anything since you already had to buy the game.

Operation Payback for CS:GO came out in 2013 and basically rewarded you with a coin that was a different color based on playtime... similar to how a battle pass would work, but without the objectives (which would come in later passes).

At least with those, the creators of the maps that got featured were paid the money raised on the passes.

It has evolved so much since

From a way to support competing teams directly to a way to finance corporations for little to no effort

It’s also implemented nicely in rocket league

People can hate fortnite all they want, but the season pass can be easily acquired just playing the game, and a season pass pays itself out and leaves out some vbucks, which should be the minimum for any game with battlepass. They also only have 1 type of coin whether you pay or not.

That being said. Fuck season pass… tired of dirty Fomo strategies

Season passes in itself was a smarter way to monetize in that if you planned to get all DLC anyways thus was a more convenient and often cheaper way to do so (often discounted from anywhere to 10-30% overall). But battle passes are just crap designed to emulate pride and accomplishment

Early MMORPG monthly subscriptions are likely where this all started; not battlepasses per se, but the precursor to the monetization of play beyond initial purchase of a title. Though I think for the Battlepass as we think of it today looks like it might be Dota 2 just from some really cursory google searching.

What killed me is when they did a battle pass, they did it initially for the right reasons. While it wasn't a lot, some of that money went to the artists that made the skins, some of it went to the players to increase the prize pool, and yeah some of it went into unlocking cool items. Hell, I think one of the TIs unlocked techies.

I think after TI 8, I was just done. TI hosts one of the biggest prize pools in gaming, and it should be much higher. I think the last time I checked, 15 or 20% went to the prize pool. I mean, that's horrible considering how much is dropped on TI each year.

That’s DLC. Not a battle pass.

You are very wrong with everything you said lmao

My only two experiences with BPs are Rocket League and Overwatch 2. The difference is insane lmao

I was there gandalf. When oblivion had downloadable horse armour

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World of Warcraft?