If the fact that CD Projekt Red is already managing to offer free PlayStation 5 upgrades to owners of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which is a five-year-old game, this latest revelation only makes the whole situation even worse for 505 Games and Remedy. You cannot upgrade your PlayStation 4 copy of Control to the next-gen version unless you own the newly-released Ultimate Edition, meaning that players who wish to do so must buy the game all over again despite the fact they may already own all the content this latest version contains.
We already knew all of this, but as it turns out, owners of the Deluxe Edition have been silently upgraded to the Ultimate Edition over the course of today. But then they were degraded back down again as word got out, meaning that the functionality is no longer available. This all cracked off over on gaming forum ResetEra, where users began reporting that they could download the Ultimate Edition without charge. However, fast forward to now and those same people are slapped in the face with a price and the option to “Add to Basket”.
What this essentially means is that both the developer and the publisher did actually have the ability to upgrade certain versions of Control all along, but they claimed they didn’t in a recent blog post. It was said: “The upgrade path that we are offering is only possible when upgrading from the same version of the game. As we are only doing additional development on Control Ultimate Edition on the next gen platforms, we are unfortunately unable to offer an upgrade path to all existing Control players.” Except that exact upgrade path has been offered on the PlayStation Store throughout the day. By accident, that is.
So, where does that leave us? In a sticky situation we think. Evidence now clearly suggests that the Deluxe Edition of Control can be upgraded to the Ultimate Edition, thus granting a free PS5 upgrade, but 505 Games and Remedy continue to deny the ability exists at the time of writing. Should either party issue an update on the situation, we’ll be sure to inform you.
