This article investigates the origin, circulation and consumption of a new commodity – the “battle pass” – in the complex ludic economies of contemporary digital games. The article dives deep into the history and political economy of battle royale shooters and the game Apex Legends (2019), a free-to-play example of the genre monetized in part by a battle pass. Inspired and in dialogue with Nieborg and Poell’s (2018) theory of platformization, this article asks questions related to how digital games like this operationalize their status as ‘contingent commodities’. The article then engages in an ‘app walk-through’ (Light et al., 2018) of Apex Legends, analysing its vision, operating model and governance. The focus here is on revealing the ‘mediator characteristics’ that structure in-game commodities like avatar skins, loot boxes and the battle pass. There is then a discussion and theorization of these monetization strategies and the industry-wide tendencies for consumerism they signal. A key takeaway is that digital consumption in games is at once both easy to ‘see’ but also highly abstracted, making it very difficult to pull apart what people are actually consuming when they engage with the monetization layer of contemporary digital games.

本文研究了当代数字游戏复杂的荒谬经济中一种新商品（“通行证”）的起源，流通和消费。文章深入探讨了大逃杀射击游戏和游戏Apex Legends（2019）的历史和政治经济学，该游戏是一种免费游戏，其类型部分通过战斗通行证货币化。受Nieborg和Poell（2018）的平台化理论启发并与之对话，本文提出了与此类数字游戏如何将其作为``或有商品''的地位进行操作有关的问题。然后，文章进行Apex Legends的``应用演练''（Light等人，2018），分析其愿景，运营模式和治理。此处的重点是揭示构成游戏内商品（例如头像皮肤，战利品箱和战斗通行证）的“中介者特征”。然后，对这些货币化策略以及它们所传达的整个行业的消费主义趋势进行讨论和理论化。一个关键的要点是，游戏中的数字消费既易于“看清”又高度抽象，这使得人们在与当代数字游戏的货币化层互动时很难真正分解出他们实际消费的东西。