Losing Control
Last week, owners of Control’s Digital Deluxe Edition on PlayStation 4 had a brief window in which their version upgraded to the Ultimate Edition, something 505 Games said couldn’t be done. In mid-August, the studio announced the Control Ultimate Edition, a re-release of the game that would come with all DLC included and could easily be upgraded for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X at no additional cost – an option not available to those that bought the game at launch. The studio defended this decision by saying it is “unfortunately unable to offer an upgrade path to all existing [console] Control players.” – a claim that no longer holds water.
First reported in a ResetEra thread, users noticed the upgrade around September 10th, the Ultimate Edition launch date. Users would see their Digital Deluxe Edition displaying as the Ultimate Edition, making those in the thread questions if 505 Studios had updated its plans and failed to notify players. Upon restarting their consoles, the Digital Deluxe Edition was no longer available in the user’s Library or PS Store, instead completely replaced with the Ultimate Edition. The ‘error’ has now been fixed.
This whole mess is most likely due to the Ultimate Edition and Digital Deluxe Editions being confused when the bundle pack was first registered to the PlayStation Store. It will be interesting to see if other titles with next-gen upgrades fall into the same trap.
Either this is some annoying and shambolic fuckery from 505 Studios, or Control itself is an Object of Power, able to exist in a state in which it can and can’t be upgraded simultaneously. Whatever the explanation is, I hope the studio gets its best people to look into the mystery and come up with a solution that doesn’t force people who bought Control at launch, and those who talk up the game non-stop on their podcast, to purchase the game a second time.