Post-Launch Heroes in Marvel’s Avengers Will Be Free, but Their Battle Passes Won’t Be

With one week to go before the launch of Marvel's Avengers, its developers have shed some more light on how folks can plan on customizing the way their heroes' look. For the core Avengers crew included in the game at launch, players will be able to earn cosmetic rewards for all six heroes along a two-track Battle Pass-like system for free. As for Hawkeye and the other heroes coming after launch, you will need to spend a little.

In a new post published today at Square Enix's official Avengers site (via Twinfinite), you can find a rundown of how the game's "Hero Challenge Cards" work. In practice, they work like a Battle Pass in games like Fortnite or Apex Legends, only each individual Avenger will have a Card all their own. The Challenge Cards all have 40 tiers of both free and premium rewards, ranging from outfits and emotes to resource bundles and even Credits, the premium currency in Marvel's Avengers.

Unlocking those premium rewards for heroes like Hawkeye and Spider-Man (a PlayStation exclusive, mind) will cost 1,000 Credits each. Thankfully, these Challenge Cards won't be time-limited nor will they rotate, and they each follow the conventional Battle Pass trend of granting enough premium currency to unlock another one. So, if you earn enough Credits to unlock a new Hero Challenge Card, you should in theory be able to keep unlocking another Card as you complete the 40 tiers and stack up another 1,000 Credits—that is, you will if you don't end up using those credits on other cosmetics.

Hero Challenge Cards will work the same way across platforms, so this doesn't factor into the way folks should take the PlayStation-exclusive cosmetics into consideration. Ditto the cosmetics tied to cell phone carriers and gum.

Marvel's Avengers comes out on Friday, Sept. 4 for Xbox One, PS4, PC, and Google Stadia. It'll also be coming to Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 when those consoles launch and current-gen owners will be able to take advantage of free upgrades.