The Callisto Protocol, out next week, has been heavily criticised for its season pass. Now, game director Glen A. Schofield has responded to controversy.
If you’ve not picked up on the story yet, strap in. Space-based survival horror The Callisto Protocol will have a season pass, which isn’t that unusual in itself. However, details of the season pass were recently posted on Steam, which is where the controversy began.
The Callisto Protocol’s season pass content will include – amongst other things – new player death animations, new enemy death animations and a new hardcore difficulty mode. Given that the game has a strong gore factor, as underlined by some trailers, it seems pretty suspect to remove some of the game’s gruesome animations and make people pay for them.
At least, that’s what some people assumed was happening. However, director Glen A. Schofield has stated that this is not the case.
“To be clear: We’re not holding anything back from the main game for the season pass. We haven’t even started work on this content yet. It’s all new stuff that we’ll be working on in the new year. Fans have asked for EVEN MORE deaths, so we’re making it a priority next year,” he Tweeted.
So that’s okay, then. It’s all one big misunderstanding. Nothing to see here, move along. Er, no. Not quite.
First of all, developer Striking Distance Studios are still locking the hard mode behind a paywall. Secondly, they’re asking players to pay for something that absolutely should be part of the game or, at least, part of a free post-launch update.
This feels like Striking Distance and/or publisher Krafton are testing the water as to what players are prepared to pay for, on top of forking out for a full-priced game. Yes, we’re still looking forward to The Callisto Protocol but this has slightly soured the goodwill we, and we suspect, a significant portion of the internet, had towards the game.
To be clear: We’re not holding anything back from the main game for the season pass. We haven’t even started work on this content yet. It's all new stuff that we’ll be working on in the new year. Fans have asked for EVEN MORE deaths, so we’re making it a priority next year.
— Glen A. Schofield (@GlenSchofield) November 23, 2022
We have our fingers crossed that Striking Distance/Krafton will do the right thing and release these extra animations and the new difficulty mode for free when they’re ready. Because, despite Schofield’s “clarification”, this isn’t a good look.
