After BattleState Games announced a new Escape From Tarkov $250 bundle would contain the game’s PvE mode, players have been outraged.
If there is one thing gamers hate, it is paywalls and ridiculous costs to pay for advantages over other players. Last week, Escape From Tarkov’s BattleState Games came out with an announcement for a new bundle called The Unheard Edition, which would contain access to a PvE co-op mode and numerous upgrades that will give players an advantage during play for the price of $250. The cost of this newly added edition was only half the problem.
Escape From Tarkov is a brutal survival focused battle royale extraction shooter game known for its special gameplay on scarcity, danger and RNG moments. It is a game where finding a certain medicine or key item could help in future runs. While it is a shooter at its core, like Call of Duty Warzone or PUBG, it is a shooter where every single item matters much more than in any other game.
Because of this, players who owned the now-delisted Edge of Darkness (EoD) Edition bundle, which cost $150, were upset. The EoD Edition originally promised players that it would be the highest edition of the game. It included a season pass that promised access to all future DLC, and now this new edition superseded that fact.
To make matters worse, Escape From Tarkov‘s community manager jumped on the game’s Discord server to claim that the PvE mode did not count as downloadable content, and that even players who had been promised all the DLC would have to pay $250 for the new mode to get it. BattleState Games attempted to mend fences with its players by offering EoD owners additional features, including high-priority matchmaking and access to the new PvE mode for six months, but this offer of limited access and “more pay to win stuff” has apparently not regained the trust of players.
The latest update on the game‘s Reddit page came a couple of days ago where BattleState Games CEO Nikita Buyanov released a statement. Buyanov explained the studio’s belief that a new game mode does not count as DLC but added that it would nevertheless be available for free to all EoD members “at the release of the game.” The CEO continued to defend how a new game mode was not DLC, offering some discounts to upgrade editions.
However, fans have already lost their trust in the studio, which continued to defend the terminology of their latest PvE mode not being a part of DLC. Players noted their discontent following the released statement, explaining how the game has been in early access since 2017, and a release could still be years away. Many players have left the game since this all unfolded last week.
Hopefully, the studio could rescind its decision or find a way to justify the new $250 version for the access to PvE co-op. Lesson of the day: do not put a $250 paywall for new game modes, microtransactions are a tough sell, and do not make false promises to gamers!
