Battlestate Games has angered its audience with a broken promise that has prevented the community that heavily supported Escape From Tarkov from getting access to a new cooperative PvE mode.

Escape From Tarkov has been given an expensive $250 edition, The Unheard Edition, which includes a PvE mode with co-op support. Your achievements will not be reset (PvP modes have their server achievements cleared every few months), and progression will be persistent. There is nothing wrong with the mode itself, but there is an earlier $150 Edge of Darkness edition of the game that is no longer available for purchase. This version has been touted by Battlestate Games as offering free access to all future DLC!

According to Battlestate Games, the new game mode is not a DLC, but a feature. Well, this comment was inappropriate, as the audience was incredibly angry about it! Especially since you can upgrade from the Edge of Darkness Edition to the Unheard Edition… but without a discount. On Discord, the developers explained that they think DLC is additional content, while PvE is a feature and a game mode, and even though we want it to be DLC, it’s not, it’s the featured game mode in the new version of the game.

Escape from Tarkov – The Unheard Edition trailerhttps://t.co/1bXyHKjmTB#EscapefromTarkov pic.twitter.com/W3GiXly2t0

— Escape from Tarkov (@tarkov) April 25, 2024

There was outrage on Reddit, Twitter, and Discord, and a video of The Unheard Edition uploaded to YouTube received 5,200 likes and… 31,000 dislikes. Escape From Tarkov is still in closed beta, despite having been available since 2017. Some players may not like the pay-to-win elements in the new edition of the game (larger inventory and storage space, unique melee weapon, increased starting character level skills). And a few hours after the announcement of The Unheard Edition, the developers confirmed on Twitter that they will make the PvE mode available only in the most expensive version…

There’s a lot of criticism on Discord, and whitelisting encourages others to spam, post memes, and let the world know what’s going on. Shiro, the community manager for Escape from Tarkov, says that shutting down Discord would not be a good solution, but would only make things worse. When will Battlestate Games realize that this was a very brazen move on their part?

Source: PCGamer, Reddit, Discord