There's nothing that irritates some gamers more than having to pay for more content, let alone content that seemingly should have been put into the game in the first place but cut and released later with a price tag. When word got out that EA was planning to charge players money for additional weapons in the ongoing Battlefield: Bad Company beta, folks weren't too happy.
EA confirmed today that all ten usable weapons in the beta won't cost gamers anything but you'll have to work for them. While owners of the Gold Edition of the game will receive the ten weapons straight out of the box, regular gamers will have to achieve the highest rank in the game in order to utilize all the weapons.
Originally, only five out of the 10 weapons would have been released, while the remaining five would stay locked till a purchase was made. Karl-Magnus Troedsson, senior producer on Battlefield: Bad Company mentioned that the uproar may have been attributed to a simple misunderstanding.
"It all started when the beta came out. The beta is a beta. We had some problems with explanation of the weapons that are available or you can see on the unlocking page. We had some weapons that we were planning to release through various marketing programs, but they were actually flagged there like you were supposed to buy these weapons through Xbox Live Marketplace, and that was a misunderstanding between marketing and us the developers. We clarified that in the last statement that went out, but lately there's been a lot going on about the Gold Edition weapons.
These Gold Edition weapons, we won't give away, you have to do something as a gamer. The Gold Edition guys and girls that actually buy that game will have some time where the weapons are exclusive, because if you don't buy the Gold Edition, you have to earn them. That means you have to rank up all the way to the top rank, which is rank 25, and then you have a massive unlock of five new weapons which are the same that are in the Gold Edition."
Battlefield: Bad Company will be released on June 23rd for Xbox 360 and PS3.
[Via GameSpot]
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Updated June 4th, 2008
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I love how it's still "you have to earn the weapons, or you can just pay extra and get them all straight away!"
lol
same as some car racing games on X360, you can earn the car or buy it outright.
Power to the peoples
Money=Power
You would think a company like EA in the situation that it is in would want to be more subtle about stating that.
Yeah KG, I remember that happening in some of the NFS games. You could unlock the cars by completing the career mode... or you could just buy 'em =P