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 questionable 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 $US250 paywall—made even worse by having previously sold a $US150 Edge of Darkness edition that had promised all future DLC—all then halfway reneged by offering a confusing $US50 upgrade for those affected.
Except a whole bunch of people had already forked out the full $US100. Now, how could this situation be made worse? What about instead of refunding those people the $US50 they clearly deserve, Battlestate could keep that money and give them a voucher worth $US50 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 the.
