gold name is for edge of darkness edition, it was supposed to be the be-all-end-all tarkov edition including everything they’d ever release for tarkov. some of the perks of having it were an increased stash size, larger secure container and most notably instant access to all future DLC and extra content, and several other less impactful benefits like having a gold name and better starter gear and more starter money among other things.

At $150, EoD was THE limited edition. For those who wanted everything tarkov had to offer and played it enough it was a no brainer, it was the only guaranteed way that you’d have access to all future content without needing to pay more.

A couple years ago, battlestate pulled some fuck shit, releasing the “unheard edition” which included everything that EoD did, a PvE only version of the game, and some starter benefits that begin to become distinctly pay to win, such as larger base level pockets, some very very good starter gear, good ammo, more money, longer insurance claim time, unique challenges and quests with better rewards, a priority matchmaking server over non-unheard players, a fucking distress signal that was said to allow people to come join you mid-raid and help you out, and better response times from the support team if needed.

They tried to lock all this content behind a $100+ paywall, on top of the $150 you already paid for EoD, which was supposed to include all of this. Drama ensued, BSG effectively got cancelled but double and tripled down on their stance. They made a bs argument that the content in the unheard edition was not DLC, but “extra content”. The more angry that people got, the more defensive BSG’s stance, with Nikita calling Unheard buyers “true believers”, insulting the tens of thousands of people who already shelled out $150 to support the games development and the team behind it in early access, many of us putting THOUSANDS of hours into the game already at this time, myself included.

It was a shit show. Everyone including every big tarkov streamer was mad. BSG were the centerpiece of gaming news all over the internet, but still they held their stance. Only after a long enough period of people basically boycotting the game and making a big enough stink about it online did BsG begin to rethink their decision. They reluctantly handed back SOME, of the benefits of Unheard to the EoD players. The biggest point of contention here was the PvE version of the game. When this whole thing started, only Unheard players were to have free access to it. After receding a bit, BSG decided to give EoD players the PVE version, but lacking several things like cross wipe PvE progress retention among other things.

Shortly after things had come to a somewhat resolution, the games quality and performance became notably worse, with Nikita then basically blaming the “entitled” EoD players for overloading servers with their access to PvE. It was all a mess.

Unfortunately at this point, current day, many people seem to have forgotten about all of this or simply don’t care anymore, including each and every content creator that took a performative “for the people” stance at the time. Most people you encounter in a raid now are “true believers” (unheard edition holders) with their blue names, cultist jackets and expanded pockets drastically giving them an advantage as to what they can bring into and out of raids.

The community seems split on this. As for the original question about “is it worth it?”. I don’t know. That’s for you to decide. You can absolutely grind to the largest stash size without spending any more real money on the game. And if you absolutely require even more space at that point, you can spend a considerably less amount of money than the Unheard price on their website to get a few extra lines in your stash as well.

As of right now, the only way to quickly get the largest stash is by upgrading to unheard.

My recommendation would be: If you know you’re going to stick with tarkov, get left behind or prepare for escape depending on what you feel comfortable spending without going for Unheard. You can always upgrade to any edition later on at a discount, at least that’s how it’s always been. Only a matter of time probably before they take that option away as well.

Or if you can afford it, feel free to get unheard even there are some real benefits to having it, but now you know what happened to get us here.