Marvel Rivals is breaking its original battle pass out of the vault for a limited time

A comic-book-style Scarlet Witch videogame character dressed in red standing in front of a bright background — (Image credit: Tyler C. / NetEase Games)

Battle passes have a lot of problems when it comes to FOMO, but one of the worst ones is that they disappear after a season is over, locking you out of all the rewards you missed. It should be more common for games to let you keep them after they expire, or, better yet: not have them expire at all.

Netease is at least taking a small step toward making battle passes more available—with some caveats—in Marvel Rivals' next update.

Starting on May 15, the original Marvel Rivals battle pass for season 0 will be available again. It'll cost around $6, or 590 Lattice, to unlock it and start earning the cosmetics, which includes skins for Mantis, Hela, and Black Panther. It won't go away once you own it, but the catch is that there won't be a free track available. You have until May 29 to buy it before it leaves again, according to a post by Netease.

Netease says other battle passes might return, "but any such plans will span at least two seasons and be priced at a minimum of 20% higher than the original seasonal rate."

While it's not the most generous way to handle it, it's certainly better than not doing it at all. Overwatch recently brought back loot boxes as free rewards, which has helped smooth over how starved for skins you are without a credit card, but even Blizzard has said it's "not a big priority" right now. I wish it were, because games like Helldivers 2 and Deep Rock Galactic show why the old way of handling them needs to go.

Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre.

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