When the game was published by Kakao Games in the west, that served as enough disincentive for me to not bother purchasing (no matter how cheap it was) and playing Black Desert Online. And even after several opportunities to get the game for free, it became a hard pass.
One would’ve thought that the developer Pearl Abyss (PA) taking control of publishing their own game, would result in a better overall customer experience. I actually decided to take advantage of PA’s limited time offer to get the game for free (but I never bothered to login and create a character since I heard customer service went downhill from the start). Because as it turns out, it has been a worse experience for some including the horror story that was covered in the above video.
I would suggest watching Kira TV’s prior video about this situation; in a nutshell, everything he says is spot on regarding how this is absolutely no way to treat any customer (let alone this particular player who has been playing since launch and has spent a lot of time and money). The fact that PA gives zero care about the optics of how poorly they’ve handled this, tells me enough.
This is yet another abusive gaming company that believes they can do whatever they want because they feel they have a captive enough audience who will take whatever bullshit that can be dished out. This is why I personally set limits on how much money I spend in these games because those who have way too much disposable income and pump ridiculous sums of money into these companies (just because it can be done), are giving these companies every reason under the sun to continue to commit these type of poor business practices.
Trion Worlds was bad enough. Gamigo has been far worse. But Pearl Abyss has managed to outdo them all. Anything this company ever makes is off limits and an immediate hard pass for me because they’ve shown what they are.
