Ubisoft Details The Division's Season Pass

Ubisoft launched the open beta for The Division on the Xbox One yesterday, and today, the PS4 and the PC will be able to get in on the action. With players exploring an open world, apocalyptic New York, Ubisoft has decided to share with us more details about the game--or, more specifically, the kind of expansions that will be coming out, and the bonus stuff you’ll get for buying the season pass.

Ubisoft has three paid expansions planned for The Division over the course of the next year; the first, Underground, opens up a new underground area (duh) for players, where you and your friends can delve into the darkness and pit yourselves against brutal waves of enemies as you try to survive together… or die apart. The second expansion, called Survival (they’re really not trying for these names, huh?), will introduce a new survival challenge where they have to endure in an environment so hostile it’ll keep even the most seasoned veterans on their toes. The third, called Last Stand, has no information regarding it yet, but considering how on-the-nose these titles have been it’s not hard to imagine what it all entails.

So if you get the season pass, you get all of these, plus a sawed-off shotgun, a wardrobe of new clothing and weapon skins, and a ‘special monthly benefit’ such as content drops and special events. While we know the season pass will be included in the Gold and Sleeper edition of the game, you can still buy it separately, although we don’t know the price. Ubisoft was also quick to point out there would also be free updates, which would include things like new game modes and features.

Two things.

First of all, between the season path, monthly ‘rewards’, and multiple special editions of the game, it’s abundantly clear that The Division is everything that’s wrong with today’s gaming industry. It’s just like what Ubisoft did with Watch_Dogs, but worse, because even that didn’t have any season passess associated with it. It’s greedy, it’s annoying, and it complicates things way more than it really needs too. But with all that said--at least Ubisoft is being fairly straightforward with what each expansion actually has, so they’re not pulling the EA thing where you can buy a season pass for content you don’t even know the name of yet. If you’re going to do this kind of thing, at the very least you could be transparent about it, and that’s what Ubisoft is doing. So thanks for that.

Otherwise, if The Division proves to be worth the season pass, well… we’ll find out soon as people start reporting in, won’t we?