Battle passes are a point of contention among gamers. It's certainly easier to understand of the game in question is free to play, not costing a penny of your hard-earned cash, but if you've already paid a premium amount, then the gloves come off.
With this in mind, Anders Howard, the Fortnite battle pass designer, has just joined Naughty Dog. Howard announced this move in a tweet with an image showing himself smiling in front of the Naughty Dog logo in the team's Santa Monica studio.
What would someone with experience creating a battle pass for Fortnite be doing at Naughty dog? According to his LinkedIn page, Howard is now the company's 'principal monetization designer.'
This begs the question, what upcoming projects from Naughty Dog might require a battle pass? The speculated answer among the community is, of course, The Last of Us multiplayer.
Fans have responded to the move with excitement. "Them getting the guy from Fortnite is a great idea. Doesn't matter what you think of the game, the monetization of that game is to be honest.. the best I've seen in a F2P game. Even more so seeing how FN is more fair than paid games right now. This is hopefully a really good thing," Reddit user 'PilotSaysHello' says in a thread about the possibility of a battle pass in The Last of Us multiplayer.
"Other games also have a battlepass that perpetually pays for itself," 'basedcharger' says in the same thread. "But Fortnite is much better than every other one because the stuff in it is actually very high quality and they give you more coins than the pass is worth."
Other commenters in the thread cite Halo Infinite and Call of Duty as having particularly egregious battle passes that require lots of grinding in paid-for games, as well as buying the battle pass itself.
While fans seem happy now, only time will tell if Howard is indeed at Naughty Dog to work on The Last of Us multiplayer and whether it will, in fact, have a battle pass at all.