Outer Worlds' Promised Free Upgrade Now Costs $15

"If you have at least the base edition of The Outer Worlds in your digital library before May 27th, you will be receiving the Spacer's Choice Edition free. That's right, free!" That was Obsidian Entertainment on April 30, laying out the terms in language that left zero room for interpretation. One month later, the terms have changed, and the upgrade that was supposed to be a thank-you gift now requires console players to spend $14.99 on DLC they were never told they'd need.

Here's what happened. Obsidian announced earlier this month that the original version of The Outer Worlds would be delisted on platforms where the Spacer's Choice Edition already exists: PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5. As a goodwill gesture, anyone who already owned the base game digitally before May 27 would receive the Spacer's Choice Edition, a remastered package bundling the base game with both DLC expansions, technical improvements, and new content, completely free. The studio even said it was investigating whether it could extend the offer to physical copy owners.

Some players, seeing the deadline, went out and bought the base game specifically to lock in that free upgrade. Why wouldn't they? Obsidian's post explicitly said "at least the base edition" was all you needed.

Then May 27 Arrived

The free upgrades never materialized on PlayStation or Xbox. Players who tried to claim their promised upgrade were instead met with a price tag. Obsidian Support acknowledged on X that "unforeseen platform limitations" had forced a change: Xbox One and PS4 players who own the game digitally now need to own both DLC expansions, Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos, to qualify. The Expansion Pass costs $14.99 on the PlayStation Store and a similar price on Xbox. PC players, meanwhile, still get the upgrade for free with just the base game.

So a promise of "free" became "free if you spend another $15 first." I don't care how you frame that; it's a bait-and-switch. The original announcement didn't say "base game plus DLC." It didn't say "PC only." It said all platforms, base edition, free. Obsidian wrote the rules, players followed them, and then the rules changed after the fact.

The studio's follow-up statement tried to soften the blow. "The Spacer's Choice Edition upgrade was intended to say 'Thanks' to anyone who purchased The Outer Worlds base game by providing them a free upgrade to the newly improved version," Obsidian wrote. "However, due to various entitlement restrictions and backend issues we weren't able to provide this as smoothly as we wished and our players are, rightfully, upset." The studio asked anyone who purchased the base game between April 30 and May 27 to contact the Obsidian support page so they can "work with you to make it right."

What "make it right" actually means remains unclear. Some players have reportedly received codes for the Spacer's Choice Edition after reaching out, but there's been no public commitment to a blanket fix. The apology reads like Obsidian got caught between what it wanted to offer and what Sony and Microsoft's entitlement systems would actually allow, and rather than delaying the delisting to sort it out, the studio pushed forward and hoped individual support tickets would patch the gap.

The Irony Writes Itself

Fans on social media and The Outer Worlds subreddit have been quick to point out the comedy of a game built entirely around mocking corporate greed pulling exactly this kind of move. "Simply put: scam," wrote one player on X, adding that Obsidian is "risking losing something far more valuable than $15: their fans' goodwill." Another suggested Obsidian could make the DLC free for a week and resolve the whole mess overnight.

The whole situation is especially strange given that Obsidian is a first-party Microsoft studio. The Outer Worlds was originally published by Private Division, a Take-Two label that no longer exists, which likely complicates the licensing picture. But if any company should be able to sort out Xbox entitlement issues, it's a studio owned by the company that makes Xbox. The fact that this is working perfectly on Steam while both console platforms are broken suggests either nobody tested the console upgrade path before making the announcement, or someone at Obsidian assumed the platform holders would figure it out.

Neither explanation is great. I've covered enough of these situations to know that "platform limitations" is usually code for "we didn't do the legwork before making the promise." Obsidian could still turn this around by honoring the original terms for everyone, whether that means eating the cost of DLC codes or pressuring Microsoft and Sony to adjust their entitlement systems. But right now, players who bought a game specifically because they were told they'd get a free upgrade are instead staring at a $15 bill they were never warned about. The Spacer's Choice Edition launched with issues back in 2023, and three years later, the branding problems haven't stopped.