Thursday, September 30, 2010

Short rant on DLC abuse



What really gets me knotted up about the gaming industry today is abusing downloadable content. DLC was meant to add additional content to the game. Stuff that maybe the developers didn't think of until after, an added bonus to the game.

But lately more and more companies are releasing unfinished games and making you pay for the rest of it. Titles are coming out with DLC in the stores on launch date.

Dead Rising 2 didn't even have the ending of the game in it, from what I've heard. How do you make the ENDING OF THE GAME DLC?! The game is incomplete, and they're not only charging you full price for it, but want you to pay extra for a finished product.

It's going to get worse and worse. Don't get me wrong, I like DLC and all, I think it's a really nice step forward for the gaming industry. If done correctly, it means that you can get more play time out of the games you love to play. It means getting updates to fix glitches that make the game less enjoyable, and now even characters are downloadable for fighting games. Content downloads like this keep a game from getting old and stale. Downloadable content was following this path at first, but somewhere along the lines developers decided they'd love the idea of milking their consumers more.


The image I used for this blog post isn't too related, since Nintendo doesn't seem to have gone down this path yet, but that's mostly because the Wii doesn't have DLC. The Pokemon games aren't really true DLC since the content is already in the game. Then again, game developers have been passing off "content unlock" bundles as downloadable content, which is even worse. You're not even downloading anything more than a few lines of code that give you access to something that's already on the game disk.


What will they think of next, downloadable multiplayer mode? Or how about just giving us the game engine and having us download the actual content? Yeah, wouldn't that be nice? You buy the disk, pop it in, and then wait an hour for the game to download (and pay an extra $20).

When will they draw the line? Stop giving us incomplete games and having us pay extra to get what we should have already.


~ Kirari ミ★


19 posts:

Hip-Hop Hikikomori said...

Games are now made with DLC in mind. The more DLC, the better the game.

dealwithit.jpg

d said...

Yep, it's getting ridiculous and I don't see it stopping any time soon.

LainIwakura said...

My body was not ready.

cubedice said...

Wait, Dead Rising 2 doesn't have the ending in it? Really? I was considering buying it on Steam too... Maybe that's why its $39.99 instead of the usual $49.99.

Kirari Star said...

From what I've read, people seem to be pretty pissed about that. Don't want to spoil myself, since I want to get it too, so haven't looked too much into it. Everyone seems to be making a big deal about DLC in Dead Rising 2.

Anonymous said...

Some of the downloadable content is ridiculous stuff too, like paying a small fortune for different colour schemes on characters.
But seriously, not having a proper ending in the game is mad. People paid for a full game, they should get a full game!

Two Who said...

From what I've seen so far, it seems to be limited to a few companies. (EA, Activision, etc.) Unfortunately, these are the biggest companies in the industry, and they seem to be intent on finding as many ways to rip off everyone as possible, so DLC was really just the icing on the cake. At least there's always piracy~

Jerry said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jerry said...

Don't forget that in PC gaming there are mods, which most of the time are a lot more fun than anything the developer could do. The best thing is that they're free!

DerpFiles said...

I agree wholeheartedly. The worst is map packs. This is why I love TF2. Until this latest update you never had to pay for anything. You can still get the new items on drops, but it just may take longer. I'm patient and not a dickhead.

2cat said...

I usually just don't buy games that are notorious for having lots of DLC shit. Map packs are fine if they don't come at launch.

PrettyBoyJP said...

Map packs for 360 games are soooooooooooooooooooooooooo expensive

It'd be ridiculous to ask all of your friends to spend like $10 for 2 maps just so you can play together in them

Wompa said...

DLC can be great at times.. and not so great (CoD map packs). There is only one group to blame and that is the people who actually PAY for DLC. If everyone wouldn't go ape shit over the newest map pack or mission pack.. then maybe DLC wouldn't be the price it is today.

Saryn said...

Eh, well...everything has its ups and downs. DLC is more good than bad these days imo. At least it generally is more than affordable.

jelly said...

>When will they draw the line?

as soon as idiots stop buying them

Kirari Star said...

Unfortunately, that won't really happen.

McRohanheim said...

If piracy and the ability to purchase used games dies out then these men will be drunk with power.

The Square Circle said...

pretty blog. and this is why i don't ever buy dlc....

can usually always get it for free. ;]

Tohno said...

Yeah I really hate DLC.
As you said, it sounded nice when the idea was to add on extra content to games that they didn't have enough time to finish, or when they want to expand/extend on an old game a bit.

But that's hardly ever the case.
Combined with game updates it gives developers an excuse to put out half done buggy games and gives halfway intelligent costumer's less incentive to buy new games near or at releases.

There is no reason I should have to pay more for stuff that should have already been in the game to begin with, if they're gonna be lazy about the game making and put out stuff they didn't have time to finish latter then they should lower the price of the game accordingly, or offer the later finished content for free.

DLC is just game developers way of squeezing more money out of games, is it not enough we're already paying more then previous generations for incomplete games that have half the play time of last gen games on average?

Some time back I was checking out those online stores and I saw that the same day Split second was released they were already trying to use DLC to charge more then retail for the game, but it was what they were selling that made me really question the current state of gaming, They weren't really selling any content, they were selling the ability to unlock stuff in the game, stuff you unlock anyway if you play the game.
They're practically selling you stuff you already paid for!
This is worse then the dark days of 1-800 hotlines for game tips.
At least back then when I'd turn on my console I wouldn't be barraged by advertisements.

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