PUBG Lite Removes All Ways of Earning L-Coins From Lite Pass

Anyone familiar with PUBG Lite’s “Lite Pass” knows that it charges a fixed amount of money – allowing players to unlock cosmetics as they level up. Each level grants some cosmetic or in-game currency in the form of XP or L-coins. L-coins is PUBG Lite’s premium currency granting access to a wider array of cosmetics on the Store, and can only be earned by paying real money. The Lite Pass awarded L-coins at quite a few stages in the first season, allowing players to stock up on them and unlock Season 2’s Lite Pass without paying anything from their pocket. This might not be the case any longer, as Season 2’s Lite Pass does not reward L-coins at any level.

Most games having a battle pass system allow you to unlock cosmetics by leveling up and rewards the grind with enough “premium currency” to unlock the next battle pass for free. Fortnite had this since the first season itself, which incidentally was the one to inspire the battle pass monetization model across a wide variety of genres of multiplayer games. PUBG Lite no longer rewards L-coins which allows one to get the next Lite Pass free of cost. Essentially, anyone who wishes to unlock the cosmetics in the Lite Pass needs to cough up money every season.

The community has been divided in this crass attempt at monetization. Some think that it is reminiscent of the monetization prevailing in Activision/EA games. Others think that the developers are becoming greedy, and need to address persistent issues in the game (including working on a better anti-cheat system) instead of focusing more on redesigning the game’s currency system and cosmetics. Yet others think that making money from cosmetics and battle passes is fine as the base game is free and the microtransactions involved do not give an edge to the people who buy into them.

PUBG Lite has been losing players steadily as the hype is dying down. Add the persistent hacker menace, occasional bugs and glitches, and now, an extremely bad way of forcing players to cough up more money to expand their virtual wardrobe to that, and it will be easy to understand the reasons for players diving off the hype and into something else. Something like Call of Duty Lite – if it is ever made by Activision.