It seems the publishers of the massively popular MMORPG, Black Desert Online, have been a bit on the naughty side. They have been banning people on their forums as well as deleting any comments that criticize their recent"P2W" update.

The new update allows the game's online store, called the Pearl Shop, sells featured items that can only be purchased for real money. Many players were mostly upset that the items for sale offer special bonuses that can't otherwise be obtained. For example, pets offer benefits like automatic looting of corpses, and can only be purchased through the store or as an add-on to a deluxe version of Black Desert Online.

On top of this, a change announced 2 days ago, those pets and premium items can now be sold for in-game silver. The reason that Black Desert did this was supposedly because: "There will always be players who, for whatever reason, do not get to experience all the features Black Desert offers, including Pearl Shop Items. Adding a mechanic that grants access to Pearl Shop items with in game currency will allow more players to enjoy such content." Many players claim, however, that this new system will encourage players to spend real money in order to sell items and acquire insane amounts of silver, which is a key resource in Black Desert's economy.

Not only have people complained on Reddit, but have also organized mass picket strikes in the game. Some big guilds have even changed their icons to express their anger towards this change. Even more players are trying to organize a 'black out' next week to express their anger.

Screenshot courtesy of PCGamer

One user by the name of "hurtin1" on the PCGamer forum also argues that: "This means that instead of just P2W items being available for cash, *everything* is available for cash."

In response to all this backlash, Daum or Kakao, have begun "marking valid concerning comments as inappropriate, deleting them and then restricting the poster on their forums aka ban." Several Reddit users have posted screenshots and blog posts of their comments being marked as inappropriate on the game's forums. Reddit user Garandou, made a post about a blog article in which user Featherine talks about how he had written a long post on the BDO forums about the new P2W system, only to have it marked as inappropriate. In the comments of the blog post, the OP follows up and claims that after his latest forums post, his account had been subsequently banned. Another Reddit user by the name of coobadoob, also posted an identical event where his post had been marked as innapropriate by the same admin who deleted Featherine's, CM_Aethon.

Image courtesy of Reddit user coobadoob

No official statement has yet been released by the devs, but there is no doubt that these actions will certainly cast a dark shadow over both the game and devs.

Editor: There was an error in the original post of this story which we deeply apologize for and it wasn't up to our usual quality. We have changed the copy to no longer state that users were being banned from Reddit and instead stating that it was from the game's official forums. In addition, we are working on a more detailed fix in the hours to come, including reaching out to the developer. Apologies about the error.

Update

We have added more to the story to add in more details and information.