UPDATE 12/10/2020: In a response to feedback sent by Pheonixmaster1, the reply confirms that this issue is an unintended bug and will be fixed in a future update.
With Fire Emblem Heroes still remaining active and approaching its fourth anniversary, its latest update quietly dropped a feature that has become a source of concern for players who don't use in-app purchases. Fire Emblem Heroes has remained Nintendo's most successful mobile game financially, though 2020 has been a controversial year for the mobile app.
Nintendo has had a unique history in the mobile department. One of its earliest mobile games, Super Mario Run, was free to start but paid to access the rest of its content, and as a result wasn't that successful. But when Fire Emblem Heroes released in 2017, it was a massive financial success due to the gacha mechanics when summoning for characters. However, over time, the game started to receive criticisms for aspects such as powercreep, with newly released characters being so much stronger than the older characters. These criticisms reached a boiling point when on its third anniversary, a paid subscription service known as the Feh Pass was introduced that locked certain features behind a paywall of $9.49 a month.
Even before the game's fourth anniversary, another wave of controversy is coming yet again to Fire Emblem Heroes. The latest update brought forth the fifth book to the game, featuring a new setting with new characters, but on iPhone only, if players have in-app purchases disabled, the game no longer allows players to summon on any type of banner. Not even with orbs that are earned in-game. However, this change does not apply to Android users. YouTuber Pheonixmaster1, who has covered the game since release, has voiced his grievances with this new change.
There has been a consistent pattern established from some of Nintendo's actions in the mobile market as of late that has garnered criticism. On the anniversary of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, a premium subscription service was announced to get randomized items from fortune cookies. Mario Kart Tour has also gotten panned for being a blatant attempt at cash-grabbing consumers with its subscription service and system being very akin to loot boxes.
While Fire Emblem Heroes has received controversy in the past for some of its mechanics being seen as predatory, this is establishing a disturbing pattern. It's impossible to know on what end this change came from, whether it was from Nintendo, developer Intelligent Systems, or DenA Co., who has helped work on other Nintendo mobile titles like Pokémon Masters, but regardless, this further contributes to a pattern of predatory practices from Nintendo's mobile market. It's not a good look when these types of moves are often compared to those of other controversial companies like EA and Activision Blizzard, especially when loot boxes have been proven to correlate to gambling addictions. Fire Emblem Heroes will likely stick around for many more years to come, but like Nintendo's other mobile properties, the path it's going down is a very dark one.
Source: Pheonixmaster1