It might be a good idea for Escape From Tarkov developers Battlestate Games to hire a PR person. It’s arguable that the team’s current approach of just making awful decisions as loudly as possible isn’t doing enormous good for its reputation. Last month saw a new PvE mode for the first-person shooter gated behind a $250 paywall—made even worse by having previously sold a $150 Edge of Darkness edition that had promised all future DLC—all then halfway reneged by offering a confusing $50 upgrade for those affected. Except a whole bunch of people had already forked out the full $100. Now, how could this situation be made worse?
What about, instead of refunding those people the $50 they clearly deserve, Battlestate could instead keep that money, and give them a voucher worth $50 of in-game content?! But wait! It gets much dumber.
The amount of money players of Tarkov are willing to spend is quite astonishing. People who bought the eight-year-old game when its perpetual Early Access first began have been willingly buying it over and over ever since, presumably out of loyalty and a desire to support a project they love. However, April’s clusterfuck undid an enormous amount of goodwill, as people who’d already paid the most astonishingly large sum to guarantee access to all future DLC had assumed—not unreasonably—that this would also include newly added features. So a response of “It ain’t DLC” (actual quote) wasn’t exactly the customer support they were after.
The situation is incredibly muddled, such that while Battlestate eventually backed down to the degree that they said PvE would eventually be included for Edge of Darkness owners, it’s only “in waves,” with no firm deadline for when this might happen. Those still wanting to jump the queue were first told they needed to upgrade to (or entirely buy) the $250 The Unheard Edition, and so of course, many did. Days later it was announced that EoD owners would now need to “only” pay $50 for the upgrade, despite still fully believing they had already bought the ultimate edition of the game.
And for all those who’d paid the $100 in the interim? In any functioning universe, Battlestate would have said, “Of course we’ll refund those who paid double,” an act that would still be a struggle to call decent, given EoD owners should have been fully entitled to the update in the first place. This is not that universe, and instead the company is offering people a one-time $50 voucher for Tarkov content, that amazingly comes with ludicrous strings attached!
A statement posted to X.com (formerly a less hellish social media site) by Battlestate explains the outrageous limitations. “Please note,” it sneaks in mid-paragraph, “that you can only use the compensation once: if the cost of all the expansions you have selected is lower than the compensation, the remaining balance cannot be used later.”
Yeah, not only do people not get the money they’ve overpaid, but should they want to pick up a $30 expansion, they can kiss the other $20 goodbye. And if you’re wondering why, say, Steam doesn’t get involved, Tarkov remarkably isn’t on Steam, instead sold direct by Battlestate.
It beggars belief that a situation could be handled this poorly. We’ve reached out to Battlestate to ask why this is all happening when simply honoring the Edge of Darkness edition and paying people back their money would do so much to restore the game’s damaged reputation.
Still though, as a nice treat, players are getting two extra lines on their stash size, worth a whopping $3, so that’ll probably calm things down.
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