Downloadable Content, the new wave douchebaggery?

[SephYuyX]

Two sides of a coin here; some people see it as the best thing ever as you can get brand new content updating a game thats already been released, on the other side some people see it as a new way for the gaming industry to gank even more money from you by making you pay for features that should have been put in at the start.

I'm personally in the middle, but much closer to the 'this is just a new scam' line.

What are your thoughts on this?

I cant think of any examples right off the top of my head, but I know there have been numerous times while browsing Kotaku and seeing a topic about such and such game getting so in so DLC, and just staring at it shaking my head in disgust. I thought what the hell kind of scam is this making people pay for this shit when it should have been in the game originally?! Some of these being for games that were just released or not even released yet!

Sure being able to get new content is great, but I think it's doing more harm than good, and just giving them more options to milk money. Everything should be included in the game itself, and any important fixes can be delivered later of course.

[Chuyu]

All I gotta say is that it's a business and as long as people are willing to pay for what they get out of it, then its not legally wrong. I think it's kinda crappy to have to buy an expansion from a retailer when direct would be cheaper and the monthly fee could cover development costs. I feel that monthly fees are a big part of profit while the expansions we pay for in FFXI are meant to cover breakeven costs

[Hiryo]

Not sure of any examples. Would Vader/Yodi being purchasable via Live/PSN respectively count as a scam?

I dont really care to be honest XD but i guess thats the closest thing i can think of thats pretty laughable. Make the characters exclusive to the console then sell them later.

[SephYuyX]

Maybe scam was a poor choice of a word on my part, but along those lines atleast.
The Vader/Yoda thing was certianly a nice ploy, guess they didnt get enough money from putting all the exclusive characters on all version for SC3

[Badkarma]

Online MP downloadable weapons is the biggest douchebag move any company can make imo, giving a person an advanateg because they bought a weapon is hugely retarded, im looking at you EA.

[Kaylia]

Downloadable content (that you have to pay for) will never be a good deal for the consumer. I'm sure if we can find something worthwhile here and there, but in overall, it's a big legal scam.

It basically cost nothing to make DLC, and it's probably stuff that were scrapped during production. If you buy for 50$ worth of DLC, you will not get anything close to a complete game usually.

[BRP]

Expansions and Version Updates tend to be good.

Little bits and pieces are usually crap.

Most DLC tends to be stuff that you would normally earn by beating the game.

I think consoles get a real bad dicking when it comes to DLC anyway. What PC gamers get free console gamers have to spend 1/5-6th the original price on. This is ignoring fan DLC like mods and maps.

[Krandor]

DLC is fine when it's not the selling point of a game or when they intentionally leave features out to make you buy them as DLC (hi2u2 Megaman 9). What BRP said about stuff you can unlock in a game normally is really getting to me too. Looking at the DLC available for Soul Calibur IV, over half of it stuff you can unlock in a few hours of work, but they just slap 5 bucks (or whatever the price was) onto an unlock code and sadly people will buy it.

And of course, that kind of behavior from both the costumer and developer just encourages more people to do it, etc etc.

Between the 10 or so PS3 games I own, the only DLC I've paid for has been the online addition to Tekken DR, which by the time I bought the game was already included in the package base.

[Kyo]

Originally Posted by Badkarma

Online MP downloadable weapons is the biggest douchebag move any company can make imo, giving a person an advanateg because they bought a weapon is hugely retarded, im looking at you EA.

What game would that be?

[Exoduso]

RB DLC is certainly worth it... most games have trash for DLC though.

[arus2001]

I like the potential of DLC, but it's often done poorly. Honestly, I'd love devs to give players more options to create content for themselves to share. I know I spent entirely too much time making maps in StarCraft back in the day because not only was it fun, but seeing what other people came up with was fun, too.

[BRP]

Let's not forget

"BUY IT FOR XBOX360! IF YOU DO WE'LL GIVE YOU STUFF THAT WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH TO PUT IN THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE! ALSO NOT GIVE, BUT CHARGE YOU 5 DOLLARS. PER TEXTURE/SPRITE/WORD"

[Sonomaa]

Id like to remind everyone of little games called Unreal Tournament, UT2k3, UT2k4, and the mod community for Half Life

thats DLC baby, thats DLC. I also remember epic saying "we want to give a bonus pack to UT3 players" and MS saying, sure, for 10 bucks. I think its not entirely the game companies fault, I think the xbox live syndrome has corrupted companies into thinking they can release less and charge more

[Krandor]

The face and idea of DLC has changed in the wave of our current console generation, and for the worse sadly ):

and the mod community for Half Life

Counterstrike, nuff' said. Sadly with all the restrictions and copyright protections put on games nowadays I doubt we'll ever see a mod come to life like that again.

[Elcura]

I think DLC can potentially be great. If the company doesn't have the time to add all the stuff they want due to publishers being douchebags, deadlines and other projects blowing up then DLC is a good way to add stuff they didn't have time for. Charging for it, depends on what the content is. Sometimes it's really wrong what they think they can charge for, sometimes it's justified.

If it feels like the game is complete as it is gonna be then DLC isn't a bad thing, but if it feels like they left out stuff intentionally for the sake of charging more for it, then it sucks. Not all companies have the luxury of adding everything they want or getting their way.

[Zosi]

Originally Posted by Elcura

I think DLC can potentially be great. If the company doesn't have the time to add all the stuff they want due to publishers being douchebags, deadlines and other projects blowing up then DLC is a good way to add stuff they didn't have time for. Charging for it, depends on what the content is. Sometimes it's really wrong what they think they can charge for, sometimes it's justified.

If it feels like the game is complete as it is gonna be then DLC isn't a bad thing, but if it feels like they left out stuff intentionally for the sake of charging more for it, then it sucks. Not all companies have the luxury of adding everything they want or getting their way.

This. Some games do it well, a lot do it badly. In particular, I don't think DLC should *EVER* give you an advantage in multiplayer play. Limit it to new single-player content, new cosmetic stuff or if you really have to add multiplayer stuff, stuff that can be temporarily shared if the game host has it and unusable otherwise.

[Deeke]

My favourite example of laughable DLC douchebaggery is when a game's production team offers promotional DLC content (typically equipment/weapons) that totally fucks up all the game-balance that the development team spent their time fine-tuning.

Lost Odyssey and Dead Space are two fine examples of this. Lost Odyssey had one or two promotional crazypowerful rings and Dead Space has that Lvl 5 armour. Getting rather annoyed lately at people on another forum saying how easy and unscary Dead Space is, when they're running around on the Normal difficulty in a fully-upgraded suit.

[Day]

I'm more pissed about things like Orange Box where you buy the game but it's not even the fucking game. People like me on the shittiest connection on the planet have to wait 30+ hours to play a game after I've gone to the store and bought the damn game. Whats the point in that??!

[Kyo]

I can understand people being pissed off about DLC like megaman 9's with having to pay for difficulty settings but really its the consumers choice to buy DLC if you dont like it no used bitching about it, just dont purchase it and move on.

[Katlan]

I think some DLC has been very good... like Oblivion's DLC just agve extra content for an already huge game. But other games such as "Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee" had only 6 courses, the 7th was DLC.. that was just a way to milk the product. Unfortunantly... there are more examples of DLC being in the vein of "Hot Shots Golf" style v. Oblivion.

So yes, I think DLC has become an overall way to keep ppl playing games & to add small content later as a way for a company to release a game w/ less content & sooner then they should. But there are a few examples of DLC adding more depth to a game

[Krandor]

On the subject of DLC, read a funny comment from Sony's UK managing director Ray Maguire about exclusive DLC and Microsoft's strategy with it.

Obviously, what we have to do is make sure [...] we have the amount of money to invest in games rather than investing in stopping other people making games and progressing.


So I would much rather that we were investing money into making sure that we've got great R&D and we start producing games like LittleBigPlanet, rather than paying other people a huge amount of money to stop people playing their product.

[BrillCS]

It depends. I've downloaded a bunch of shit since I first got my 360. Of course a lot are songs for Rock Band etc. But I've also downloaded the new maps for CoD, the extra mission in Mass Effect, clothes in Dead Rising, a few strongholds in Oblivion etc. I think that it definitely adds something to games and it keep games from ever getting really stale.

The downside is I really don't like how expensive it is to download some of the stuff. I would love to see a price cutoff. Like 500 points to get the most expensive thing(barring game downloads from the xbox arcade.) You're tossing out what, 12.00 dollars just for 1000 points? And every song worth downloading for rock is 160 credits. I mean for fuck's sake that equals 6 songs.

6 songs for 12 dollars. For 12 bucks I can go out to Best Buy and get a cd with twice that amount. Using that kind of pricing, if they applied it to Rock Band there would only be a total of 30 or so songs. Make songs 50-100. Make scenarios and extra missions etc up to 500 credits.

[Elesirdur]

As a long-time PC gamer, the concept of paying for DLC sticks in my craw like a rusty railroad spike. PC gamers have been so treated over the years to modding, hacks, total conversious, and developer-released and bundled SDKs that asking us to pay $12.50 for a series of 8 quests and some snazzy but mediocre armour is tatamount to asking a Canadian citizen to pay for their hospital visit. For you non-cannucks let me translate - Does Not Fucking Compute.

I wholehartedly agree about the unbalanced DLC content allowed by buying multiplayer weapons. Thankfully Valve realized that is a bad idea and made it so you had to earn your TF2 Medic/Pyro/Heavy upgrades, not just buy them and be that tool who bought a lvl 75 FFXI character and can't figure out how to use a macro. Althought I swear some people with the Kritzkreig are like this anyway.

Free DLC is a great way to add new multiplayer maps and maybe some fun skins. I will also be buying the GTA IV DLC since the game is just so full of things to do, I want more and more and am willing to pay. But having to pay extra for difficulty settings in MM9? Capcomp can kiss the hariest part of my taint before I lay down a penny for a game feature.

[Badkarma]

Originally Posted by Kyo

What game would that be?

well i used weapons as an example but EA has a history of offering faster cars for games like need for speed for cash which is bullshit, etc things like that