Marathon’s Open Play Week seems to have caused a fair bit of confusion among players who were actually looking to buy the extraction shooter on PS5. As caught by Mp1st, some players discovered that attempting to buy the Digital Deluxe Edition of Marathon during its Open Play Week only cost them $14, since the purchase was technically considered to be an “upgrade” rather than a purchase. This meant that they only had to pay the price difference between the standard and Deluxe editions.
However, Sony quickly caught onto many players trying to take advantage of this, and has updated the PlayStation Store page for Marathon to offer some clarification. An attempt to grab the Deluxe Edition of Marathon for cheaper than even the base game through this method will now warn you that you are only buying the extra goodies that come with the Deluxe Edition, and that the purchase doesn’t include the game itself.
“Purchasing this product will grant access to the Deluxe Edition content only for the duration of the Open Play Week, after which accessing this content will require purchase of the Marathon Standard Edition,” wrote Sony. “The price displayed reflects only the Deluxe Edition content add-ons, not the Standard Edition price.”
According to Mp1st’s report, the PlayStation Store description for Marathon’s Deluxe Edition seemingly also listed the base game as being part of the entire package. This was likely the primary cause of the confusion among players who were trying to buy the title during the Open Play Week.
As one would expect, the Marathon community hasn’t taken too kindly to this move by Sony and Bungie. One player took to social media to note that, “this is exactly why people hate Bungie bro, and I play Marathon every day, what is this s***.”
Discussions about the subject on the Marathon subreddit have seen similar levels of confusion and anger from the community. While some have noted that this was essentially the equivalent of a pricing error, others raised the question of why Bungie didn’t create a separate game client that could be used to access the Open Play Week and not much else.
As for players who may have grabbed the Deluxe Edition during Open Play Week in the hopes of getting a cheap copy of Marathon, if they are no longer interested in picking up the base game, Sony still has its refund options available.
Marathon’s Open Play Week was kicked off on June 2nd across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. The title will be available to free until June 9th, beyond which, those interested in continuing their time with the PvPvE extraction shooter will need to buy the game. Interestingly, the Open Play Week also features one of Marathon’s two experimental PvE game modes – Sponsored Survival.
The start of the Open Play Week coincided with Bungie kicking off season 2 of Marathon, which brought with it new matchmaking system and the new Night Marsh map, which has been described as offering a survival horror experience by the studio.