With the launch of Apex Legends Season 1, a whole host of new content has come to the popular battle royale, some more welcome than others. One aspect of the game which players are seeking to avoid are the Apex Legends lootboxes. In fact, it seems that a way to do just that has already been found; cunning players have begun switching their country of origin to Belgium, where lootboxes are illegal and Apex Legends instead offers crafting materials in their place.
How Players Are Avoiding Apex Legends Lootboxes by Switching Region
Lootboxes have been a controversial topic among gamers for several years now. Indeed, they have attracted such attention that several countries have banned them completely. Belgium is one such country, which determined that lootboxes constituted gambling back in 2018. In fact, a criminal investigation was launched in Belgium against EA which eventually led to EA halting the sale of FIFA Points. As a result, there simply aren’t Apex Legends lootboxes (“Apex Packs”) in Belgium; in their place, the game awards players with a stash of crafting materials. Players can use these to craft the game’s skins. Although the average value is slightly decreased, it seems that many players are keen to avoid lootboxes regardless.
The method seemed to be first spotted on Reddit, by a Redditor who goes by “Mernerak”. A few days ago, a Belgian gamer and Reddit user ‘UnicornPL’ made a post which drew awareness to the lack of Apex Legends lootboxes in the country. In a response post, Mernerak posited that gamers could theoretically change their country of origin. Confirmation of this theory quickly came on PC; players had to change parts of their Origin accounts and restart the Origin client. Since the original post went up, other gamers seem to have discovered similar ways to replicate the process on PS4 and Xbox One.
Switching your region to Belgium doesn’t disable the loot boxes which appear on the free pass. This is because players don’t pay for these, so they don’t violate Belgian law. However, the lootboxes which appear in the Battle Pass are all swapped for crafting materials. In fact, players won’t even be region-locked into Belgian servers, you’ll still play in whatever your normal server is. Respawn has yet to officially comment on this issue. As such, it’s unknown if they plan on implementing barriers to stop players from doing this. For now at least, players who want nothing to do with lootboxes do at least have one option for Apex Legends.