Using season passes for monetization

Standard season passes are great at two things: conversion to spend (due to high EV) and engagement (play to earn rewards; once players make the investment, they have more reasons to return and get value back).

If your game has a relatively small but highly dedicated and engaged community and relies on high average revenue per DAU (ARPDAU), the season pass will likely be a retention, not monetization feature—pass sales won’t make up a meaningful chunk of sales in a game such as Star Trek Fleet Command, which relies on engaged players repeatedly purchasing $99 in-game resource and item bundles.

For games with low ARPDAU but a large player base (for example, Fortnite, League of Legends), passes can represent a meaningful chunk of the revenue. Still, at the time of writing, the seasonal item store in Fortnite made up for the majority (over 60%) of the revenue, with season pass sales comprising the remainder.

In general, skipping...