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Why Temtem has opted to use the Battle Pass model

Temtem is selling for almost full price while also selling premium Battle Passes, but there is a practical reason for it.

Ozzie Mejia

September 8, 2022 4:15 PM

Crema

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Temtem finally made its way out of early access this week and is now selling at a full $44.99 USD price point. Some users who are paying this amount and jumping in only to find premium Battle Passes on sale may be slightly confused. After all, Battle Passes are something used more by free-to-play titles. However, developer Crema has a solid reason behind selling additional premium items, reminding everyone that the game, at its core, is an MMORPG.

"The monetization aspect in Temtem is pretty unique because the whole game is built as an MMO, with an MMO infrastructure (big servers, large amounts of persistent data, etc)," Temtem Game Director Guillermo Andrades explained to Shacknews. "That means recurring costs for us, but we didn't want to translate those to the users directly (for example, in the form of a monthly subscription), so we opted for a more friendly approach and introduced a Battle Pass for those users that want even more customization. This solution allows us to support Temtem for years to come while giving the chance to every user to play Temtem just by paying the upfront price."

As far as reasons to double dip with a full entry price and a premium Battle Pass, that's as good as it gets. Crema's goal since Temtem first popped up on Steam Early Access all the way back in 2018 was to create a Pokemon-style MMORPG that people of all platforms could pick up and play. It's a lofty goal, but not a cheap one, so any additional revenue that the team can pick up goes a long way towards keeping the game's lights on.

There was a lot to chat about with Crema earlier this week regarding Temtem's exit from early access, its launch features, making cross-platform play work, and future features. You can read all about that in our full interview from earlier this week. Temtem is available now on PC (via Steam), PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?