Later this week, Marvel Rivals developers NetEase will bring back the free-to-play online shooter’s very first cosmetic battle pass. However, if you didn’t buy it the first time around, you’re now going to have to pay a higher price. And the developer confirmed this is how it will work moving forward for all returning passes.
Since it launched last year, Marvel Rivals has been a massive hit across console and PC. (Not a big enough hit to avoid layoffs, though.) And since the start, Marvel Rivals has featured a fairly generous battle pass system. Like many other free-to-play games in 2025, you can play the game and earn free rewards during each season as part of the active battle pass or spend some money (or in-game currency) to unlock a premium version of the pass that offers more rewards. However, unlike in most other games, once you buy a pass in Rivals you’re free to unlock its rewards whenever you want. But each pass is only available for a certain amount of time and if you don’t buy it during that window, then you can’t go back later and earn missing rewards. That’s changing this week, which is nice. Less nice is that costs are going up for these old passes.
As announced on May 13, Marvel Rivals is bringing back the very first battle pass from the game’s initial “Season 0.” However, the Season 0 pass back at launch only cost 490 Lattice. When it returns on May 15 it will cost 590 Lattice. That’s a jump from about $5 to roughly $6. The old pass will only be available for two weeks and will go away again on May 29. And there will not be a free option when it returns. So if you want any of the rewards, you’ll have to pay.
NetEase says that future passes might return, though they will not be back until at least two seasons have elapsed since their debut and the passes will cost 20 percent more when they return.
The first season in Rivals was short—just four weeks long—and happened over the holidays, so many players didn’t have a chance to get the first battle pass, which contains some great skins for Punisher, Black Panther, and Mantis. So it’s nice that its coming back and I’m happy to hear that all battle passes will seemingly be returning after a few months. But the price increase is shitty. Charging more for the same content, which is now months old, is gross and also means more players might be willing to buy a premium pass in future seasons to avoid higher costs later. Basically, Rivals has introduced some more FOMO despite the battle pass system actually being pretty nice.
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