Apex Legends: Respawn Releases Pay To Win Flatline Skin
With the release of the newest Collection Event in Apex Legends, the Sun Squad Event, fans of the battle royale are reliving a painful memory from last year all over again. The newest Collection Event features the Splash Zone Flatline Skin with an open, more visible iron sights that players are saying is a pay to win skin, just like the old Heat Sink used to be. But it’s not going to last.
No Pay To Win
Way back in Season 3, one of the fits evolving reactive legendary skins, the Heat Sink, featured an open concept iron sight that gave players a much better view of where they were shooting when aiming down iron sight. Everyone who had it used it and called it pay to win. It was a skin that, if you missed it, you were out of luck as it was only available as a level 100 and 110 reward on the Season 3 Battle Pass.
Last year Respawn Entertainment finally took action and patched the iron sights to look like every other Flatline iron sights. They stated at the time that it was never their intention to give any advantage to another player for the weapon skins they were running and that going forward, they would make sure all weapon skin iron sights were balanced.
Another Flatline Fiasco
When the Sun Squad Collection event launched, competitive players everywhere were thrilled to see that the new Splash Zone Flatline skin featured another open iron sights, similar to the Heat Sink. TikToks and social media posts began to pop up very quickly, urging people to pick up the skin for a competitive advantage.
Apex Legends tweeted out very quickly that it was a mistake and the iron sights matched the standard for Flatlines, but for some reason, part of that was missing and they were working on a fix.
Just as quickly as they had gotten excited for the new Splash Zone Skin, some players are voicing frustrations that Apex Legends ‘conned them’ into buying a skin with better iron sights just to fix it days later. But any player who is concerned with having the biggest edge in competition should have known better. When they fixed the Heat Sink Flatline skin, Respawn said they would continue to design iron sights with competitive integrity in mind. The announcement of the fix came just 2 hours after the event launched.
If players are really looking for a competitive edge, it’s not going to come from a gun skin. It’s going to come from practice and honing in on your game sense and improving your mechanics and aiming. Check out our Apex Legends Weapon Tier List to see if you’re using the right tool for the job.
The Sun Squad Collection event features 24 new cosmetic items, including 12 legendary skins for Legends and Weapons, a new Heirloom for Ash and the Heat Wave Limited Time Mode. You can check out our recap of the event, how to get all the new Legendary Skins and what Legends are best for the Heat Wave LTM.
