Escape From Tarkov Devs Offer Edge Of Darkness Owners $50 Voucher To Compensate For Unheard Edition Kerfluffle

Things are not going great for the developers of Escape from Tarkov lately. In case you missed the drama so far, players of the shooter are pretty upset with Battlestate Games, and we’d argue rightfully so. While we understand that developers need to make money, there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it. Making players who have already dropped a significant amount of cash on your game feel shafted is probably the wrong way.

Just to be clear, we’re not talking about something like an overpriced cosmetic. In the case of Tarkov, Battlestate revealed a $250 “Unheard Edition” back in April. The edition includes access to the PvE mode as well as persistent progress – both things players had been waiting on. Still, while putting this kind of content behind a high fee would be enough to upset some players on its own, it’s not the biggest deal here. That would be the fact that many players had already spent $150 on the Edge of Darkness Edition and were promised free access to any DLC content in the future.

Many would think something like the content in the Unheard Edition would be included as part of that, but it is not. According to the developer, Unheard isn’t DLC. Or, at least that’s what they said when players began complaining. As PC Gamer notes, players didn’t respond to that very well and after about a week of dealing with the upset, announced that those who originally bought Edge of Darkness would be given access to the PvE mode “in waves”. This is seemingly because the dev team is worried they won’t be able to support the server capacity. Kinda makes you wonder what would have happened had they convinced all those players to buy the Unheard Edition, doesn’t it?

Players still weren’t really buying into the whole thing so Battlestate decided to offer owners of the Edge of Darkness Edition the ability to buy the Unheard Edition for $100. It makes mathematical sense. If they paid $150 initially, and the new edition runs $250, then a hundred-dollar purchase price upgrades them without paying any more than those who just buy the Unheard Edition.

That said, the original $150 purchase was supposed to include all DLC going forward, so you can see where players would still be upset. What do you do when that doesn’t work? If you’re Battlestate, you lower the upgrade price to $50.

And yet, it doesn’t end there, as some players bit the bullet and dropped the $100 they now have to deal with the fact that the “upgrade” cost those players more than those that make the purchase now – keeping in mind we’re talking about players who already paid $150.

Battlestate Games decided to compensate players who made the $100 upgrade purchase – with a kind of refund. These players will receive a $50 voucher that can be spent with Battlestate Games only. It also has to be spent all in one go. It’s also worth noting that players can’t spend more than the value of the expansions they’ve selected.

Effectively. It’s a mess. It continues to be a mess. Some players will cave – as some already have. Some will probably walk away. A lot of players will probably be leery of spending their money with Battlestate going forward.

On the plus side, everyone will be getting an additional two lines in their in-game stash.