December’s free PlayStation Plus games were revealed last week, and the lineup of PS4 and PS5 titles left many PS Plus subscribers disappointed. That said, not long after the lineup was revealed, it was discovered that one of the free games, the PS5 game, wasn’t complete. If you missed all of this, it involved Godfall, which is free right now for PS Plus subscribers, except not really. See, rather than make the full game free, developer Counterplay Games, publisher Gearbox, and Sony decided to give subscribers the Challenger Edition, which is missing the game’s campaign.ย
As you would expect, this caused a substantial backlash, with subscribers calling the movie “disgusting” and “scummy.” Since then, the aforementioned developer has come out and defended the decision, noting the Challenger Edition isn’t a “trial” or a “demo” like many have been calling it. Further, it reveals this cut-down version of the game will actually be sold as a standalone product at $15. Just like the initial announcement, this explanation isn’t sitting well with most subscribers.
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“They should have just kept quiet. It’s even worse now knowing that it’s going to be free on the Epic Store,” said N4G user Nakiro of the developer reaction. “I’m not upset about Godfall, I’m upset that they went out of their way to give you a glorified demo as part of Plus. For me, it has very little to do with Godfall actually, just the practice of getting a demo as part of the subscription. What is to stop other developers from doing the same in the future?”
At the moment of publishing, PlayStation has yet to acknowledge the backlash or say anything about the explanation provided by the developer. At this point, we don’t expect this to change, but if it does, we will be sure to update the story accoridngly.
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