"I preordered on Steam specifically to play Zero on Deck."

Early access to Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is now available to owners of the game's Deluxe Edition, but the launch has been soured due to publisher Bandai Namco's handling of one particular pre-order bonus.

Pre-ordering any version of Ace Combat 8 comes with a copy of Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, and longtime fans were especially looking forward to this re-release because this 2006 game never appeared on anything other than PlayStation 2.

PC players were led to believe their copy of The Belkan War would be a separate product, because this is the way it works on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Something changed on Steam, however, to make the game DLC for Ace Combat 8 instead. Should it remain this way, it presents a number of associated problems, such as having to download a huge modern game to access a comparatively tiny old game, and the inability to run The Belkan War separately on weaker hardware, such as the Steam Deck.

It's not what the game's Steam listing used to say. At some point, the description was changed from "Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War is a standalone application separate from the Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve full game" to: "Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War (Steam version) is available as a DLC executable launched separately from the base game. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve must be installed in order to utilize DLCs."

It's not clear when the store page was updated to alter the wording of the pre-order bonus, but you can see this Reddit post from earlier this month where players wonder how The Belkan War was going to be accessible come launch.

In the post, a user who pre-ordered Ace Combat 8 on Steam was unable to find The Belkan War in their Steam library. The user attached a screenshot of the game's Steam page where it clearly shows the older version of the verbiage, hence their confusion.

That same quiet-change is referenced in many of Ace Combat 8's negative Steam reviews, and it's among the hottest topics on the Ace Combat subreddit at the moment, overshadowing discussions about the game itself.

Making The Belkan War an add-on rather than standalone has significant drawbacks. For one, you need to download and install the full game of AC8 - ~135GB - in order to play a port of a 2006 game that is itself under 4GB.

As one Reddit user noted, this also prevents The Belkan War from being easily playable on Steam Deck. "I had no hope of AC8 running on my Steam Deck," the user wrote. "I preordered it on Steam specifically to play Zero on Deck. Because we were promised a standalone app."

Ace Combat 8 is significantly more demanding on Steam Deck hardware, but a re-release of a 20-year-old game isn't likely to be. Being nested under a different game also means The Belkan War doesn't have its own achievements, nor support cloud saves. Play time, captured screenshots and all other profile-related items must now also exist under the umbrella game.

Given that The Belkan War has its own install folder within Ace Combat 8's directory, it can technically be launched separately by locating its .exe file, but the main game needs to be installed regardless. This is especially frustrating as none of these issues exist on consoles, where the game is a standalone app with all that entails.

At the time of writing, Ace Combat 8 has a Mixed user review rating on Steam, based on over 1,350 reviews. It will be interesting to see if that changes when the official 2nd October release date arrives.

Eurogamer has contacted Bandai Namco for comment.

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