A few weeks ago, publisher 505 Games put out a blog post explaining why existing PS4 and Xbox One players who had previously purchased Remedy’s supernatural thriller Control would not be able to upgrade to the “Ultimate Edition,” which went on sale yesterday. Now, users are reporting that their consoles showed (for a while, at least) the Ultimate Edition being in their library.
A thread on the ResetEra forum covers the story of various PS4 users who put up a thread on the Control forums, reporting that they looked at their copies of the game in their library and suddenly discovering that they were listed as the Ultimate Edition as opposed to the Digital Deluxe Edition (which came packaged with a “season pass” for all the DLC). Shortly after this thread came up, users indicated that they could no longer download the Ultimate Edition.
As for Xbox One, a tweet from Paul Rustchynsky (who works at Avalanche Studios in Liverpool) shows a store page with Control Ultimate Edition and a notification that he already owned it. There does not seem to be any indication so far that Xbox users are getting their “upgrades” revoked the same way PS4 users are, but the possibility cannot be dismissed.
Food For Thought
This particular incident pretty thoroughly discredits 505 Games’ position that they “can’t flip a switch,” when it seems painfully obvious that a switch flipped and then flipped back, at least for PS4 users. It also shoots the idea that Control: Ultimate Edition is a completely different SKU clean through the head.
What’s surprising right at the moment is the amount of hostility aimed at Remedy over this debacle. True, 505 Games seems to be taking the lion’s share of customer ire (and rightly so), but more than a few people seem to be expressing disgust for Remedy for partnering up with 505 in the first place.