Obsidian’s Free Outer Worlds Upgrade Isn’t Free on Consoles

Obsidian Entertainment, the studio behind The Outer Worlds, spent a month promising current owners a free upgrade to The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition. On May 28 the developer admitted the promise does not hold on older consoles. Owners of the base game on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One now have to own both expansions, or buy the separate Expansion Pass, before the upgrade will go through.

The catch bites one group hardest: last-gen console players who bought in during the very window Obsidian opened. PC owners keep the freebie with no strings attached. And the whole thing landed on a role-playing game whose comic premise is corporations burying costs in the fine print.

A ‘Free’ Upgrade That Skipped the Checkout Line

The plan looked generous when Obsidian first laid it out. The original game would be delisted, leaving the remastered Spacer’s Choice Edition as the only version on sale, and everyone who held the base game in their library before the cutoff would be moved up to the better build at no charge. That mattered, because the same upgrade used to cost money.

That was the message in the update and delisting notice on Steam, which spelled the offer out in bold strokes: free, across every platform the edition runs on, with the catalog price moving to $39.99 once the deadline passed. The post even named the storefronts, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series included.

Here is how the week unfolded:

1. April 30: Obsidian announces the delisting and the free upgrade, telling players the base game in their library is all they need.
2. May 27: The original game is delisted, and the promised upgrades fail to appear for many console owners.
3. May 28: Obsidian posts an apology, conceding the upgrade cannot be delivered the way it was described on consoles.

Who Gets It Free, and Who Has to Pay

The dividing line is the platform, not the player. On PC, the rule is exactly what Obsidian first described: own the delisted base game on Steam, the Epic Games Store, or GOG, and the upgrade arrives free, with no add-ons and no asterisk.

On consoles it works differently, because the upgrade checks the older license rather than the disc in your hand. A base-game-only library on PlayStation or Xbox no longer clears the bar. To qualify there, you need the base game plus both story expansions, Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos (the game’s downloadable content, or DLC), or the Expansion Pass that bundles them for $14.99.

So the people most likely to feel cheated are last-gen owners who held nothing but the base game, including anyone who grabbed it cheap in the run-up after reading that a freebie was on the way.

Players who already own everything are fine, since the upgrade simply applies. Physical-disc owners on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are the loose end Obsidian has not resolved, with the studio saying only that it is investigating whether it can include them. You can check your status on the Spacer’s Choice Edition store listing for your platform.

How Console Entitlements Turned a Gift Into a Bill

Obsidian’s explanation came down to one word: entitlements. An entitlement is the invisible license a storefront ties to your account at purchase, the record that says you are allowed to download and run a given file. When a game is repackaged into a new product, the store has to map the old license onto the new one, and that mapping is where the upgrade broke.

On Steam, the base game and its upgrade are linked cleanly enough that owning the original is sufficient, which is why PC players never hit the wall. Consoles are stricter, and that gap is the whole problem.

Spacer’s Choice Edition is a current-gen product, while the base game most console owners hold is a last-gen one. The store only releases the upgrade when the full last-gen entitlement, the base game and both expansions, is present, so a base-game-only library comes up short.

The awkward part is that Obsidian now sits inside Xbox Game Studios, yet the Xbox side broke as badly as PlayStation’s. The original was published by Private Division, a Take-Two label since shut down, so the trail runs through a company that no longer exists. Microsoft, which owns the studio, gave the same explanation to IGN. To its credit, the studio owned the mistake rather than hiding behind the plumbing.

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. 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.

That was the studio’s framing in Obsidian’s entitlement explanation on X, posted on May 28 after a day of locked-out players filling its replies.

Why the Mess Fits a Game About Corporate Fine Print

None of this would sting the same way for a different game. The Outer Worlds is a satire of runaway corporate power, a place where a colony is owned outright by a board of ten companies and a vending-machine jingle insists that “it’s not the best choice, it’s Spacer’s Choice.” Tim Cain, one of the game’s co-directors, has said he built the brand around the dumbest slogan he could think of.

So watching the studio behind that joke fumble a giveaway over hidden purchase requirements was, for plenty of players, a little too on the nose. Reactions on the game’s subreddit and on X ran from baffled to furious, and one widely shared comment cut the whole affair down to a single word: “scam.” The complaint that kept recurring was that a story so pointed about corporate exploitation had just made its own customers feel exploited.

The barbed history runs deeper than one bungled week. When the sequel was revealed, fans accused it of the same hypocrisy after it landed at a premium price, the joke being that a series about unchecked corporations kept testing how much it could charge. You can still read the original pitch on the 2019 game’s Halcyon storefront page, which casts the player as “the unplanned variable” in a colony run for profit.

A Troubled Edition, a Pricey Sequel, and Soft Sales

Spacer’s Choice has rarely had a smooth stretch. The edition arrived in March 2023 as a current-gen makeover built with the studio Virtuos, and it launched in rough shape, its Steam reviews turning overwhelmingly negative before patches clawed them back. Charging existing owners about $10 for that upgrade at the time did not win much goodwill either.

The sequel brought its own pricing drama. The Outer Worlds 2 was announced in June 2025 as the first Xbox-published game to carry a $79.99 tag, then cut to $69.99 weeks later after players revolted, a climbdown the studio dressed up with an in-universe note about fighting unchecked corporations.

“We don’t set the prices for our games,” the sequel’s director, Brandon Adler, told an interview at Summer Game Fest, steering reporters toward the Xbox side of the company. The line captured the bind a satirical studio sits in once one of the biggest companies in tech signs its checks.

Commercially, the reward has been thin. Obsidian’s leaders conceded in early 2026 that both The Outer Worlds 2 and the fantasy RPG Avowed missed Microsoft’s sales targets, with studio head Feargus Urquhart insisting “they’re not disasters” while confirming no third Outer Worlds game is in development. A studio under that kind of pressure, trying to squeeze goodwill or a little revenue out of an old game, is exactly the backdrop that made a botched freebie read so badly.

What to Do If Your Upgrade Didn’t Land

If you are stuck, the studio is sorting this out case by case rather than with one blanket fix. Players who bought the base game on the strength of the promise and then got locked out have been emailing Obsidian Support, attaching proof of purchase, and getting back redeemable codes for the upgraded version. Where you stand depends on which group you fall into:

• Bought the base game after the April 30 announcement: contact Obsidian Support with proof of purchase, since the studio says it will make it right and codes are already going out.
• Own the base game plus both expansions: the upgrade should apply on its own, though some owners had to redeem the relisted add-ons first to trigger it.
• On PC, or holding a physical last-gen disc: PC owners of the old base game keep the free upgrade, while disc owners are still waiting on Obsidian’s unfinished investigation.

Obsidian says it will square things for buyers caught in the run-up to the cutoff. For everyone else on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One who owned only the base game, the upgrade still costs the price of two add-ons they were briefly told they would not have to buy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition upgrade still free on PC?

Yes. Anyone who owns the now-delisted base game on Steam, the Epic Games Store, or GOG still gets the Spacer’s Choice Edition at no cost. Obsidian confirmed the problem is limited to consoles, where the entitlement check works differently.

Why do PlayStation and Xbox owners have to buy the DLC?

Because the console upgrade reads the full last-gen entitlement, not just the base game. To qualify, a console library needs the base game plus both expansions, Peril on Gorgon and Murder on Eridanos, or the Expansion Pass that bundles them for $14.99.

I bought the base game after the April 30 announcement. What should I do?

Contact Obsidian Support and share proof of purchase. The studio has been issuing redeemable codes for the upgraded version to players who bought in expecting the freebie, and it says it will make it right for anyone caught before the cutoff.

Does the free upgrade work if I own the game on a physical disc?

Not yet. Obsidian has said only that it is investigating whether it can extend the upgrade to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One disc owners, so physical buyers have no confirmed path at the moment.

Can I still buy the original version of The Outer Worlds?

No. The 2019 base game was delisted at the end of May, leaving the Spacer’s Choice Edition, priced at $39.99, as the only version on sale. Players who already owned the original keep it in their libraries.