The Escape from Tarkov community is furious after the recent announcement of The Unheard Edition, an upcoming $250 bundle of the game that offers a new PvE co-op mode and more exclusive features.
The backlash started after players found out that the new mode won't be available to those who purchased the Edge of Darkness edition. This $100 bundle included a Season Pass that promised access to all future DLC content.
On top of that, the exclusive features are also being considered "pay-to-win" elements, since they provide a head start for new players or give access to new elements that can't be acquired by any other means.
The game's social pages got flooded with negative responses after this, including the Reddit page, where even the moderators are allowing multiple threads complaining about this situation.
"You thought you were getting all future DLC when you bought EoD? Think again," expressed a user on a Reddit post that lists all the pay-to-win benefits the new edition offers.
As reported by Forbes, the game's lead community manager, Daniel Mavlyuberdinov, responded to the backlash on the game's official Discord by claiming this new mode doesn't count as DLC. "Just because you all want it to become a DLC it wouldn’t mean it is one. It’s a featured game mode for the new edition of the game," expressed Mavlyuberdinov.
This obviously didn't help their case and you can see for yourself how the players took it on Discord:
The official X account for Arena Breakout: Infinite, an upcoming extraction shooter based on the mobile title that's often compared to Tarkov, took advantage of the backlash by posting a message for any players looking for a new game to play.
Battlestate Games, the developers behind EFT, didn't take this lightly and responded with the following post:
With the Discord shut down and their official X account responding at other publishers, it seems Battlestate has a lot of cleaning up to do. Almost a day after the Unheard Edition announcement, the studio posted a list of new benefits EoD owners will receive in the future, however, it is clear that won't be enough to get on the community's good side.
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