Dead Space 2 DLC for PC: The Story Thus Far
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
I have a few thoughts on the subject.
For one, it's not unusual for game companies to literally have no idea what is going on with their projects. "Easter Eggs" originally started out as things coders and artists put into the game without telling the development team or publisher. I've long taken the approach that if something, even if irreverant or a nod to another game, winds up getting mentioned in the cluebooks or whatever then it's not a real easter egg. REAL Easter eggs have included things like additional audio files with messages from the creator, or game characters saying creepy/out of character things (or their voice actor in the character voice more specifically), extra graphics files, or even text messages hidden in the game code itself if you go in with programs like the ancient "D-Sector".
Of course you don't see this as often because of the possibility of being sued, and of course the reaction it might get from some people. One famous example of an "easter egg" in a game was a gay mission/kiss (guy on guy) for the game "Simcopter" which caused quite a stir at the time, being roughly the equivilent of the penis in the back of the Disney "Little Mermaid" artwork.
The point is that the DLC might have been put into the game without EA as a whole knowing about it, with the coders who did it fully knowing people would find and unlock it. This could have been done for a lot of reasons, such as it being easy to do and the artists wanting their work to be seen by PC users, to a protest against the way companies are doing DLC in games. Which brings me to the second thing I wanted to say:
This right here is an example of why I think things like paid DLC and cash shops are out of control. The very existance of "already on the disc DLC" shows that the attitude isn't one where the company is developing DLC to extend the playtime of games, but rather finding things they can hold back/cut out/whatever and sell seperatly for money. Even with extra weapons packs and the like, I find it quite annoying when they are already on the disc and your basically paying for something that you already bought.
I'll also say that I'd imagine this annoys some artists as well, some guy sits down and designs all these armor and weapon models, and wants them to be seen, and then the developer says "well, we're going to lock the stuff you did out of the game unless someone pays $5 a pop to see it", which of course means that a good portion of the player base probably isn't going to experience what you made, when you thought it was going to be a main part of the game. Irritation like that, especially if it was going to be omitted from an entire platform, could lead to relatively minor acts of rebellion... and that could be what we're seeing here.
That's just my thoughts on the matter, I very much doubt EA would go through all the trouble of lying about this. What's more they seem pretty stupid because even if they hadn't intended it, this would have been the point where a company that greedy and two brain cells to rub together would have screamed "piracy, get out of our code hackers" and then immediatly put up DLC unlock packs for whatever price.
I mean I'm glad they haven't done that on a lot of levels actually, but it would have been more of a common sense reaction than the current "we deny it despite it being right in front of us" and making it clear that they really have no idea what's going on with their team. Except in extreme cases, companies tend to wisely keep their mouthes shut about real easter eggs in their products.
For one, it's not unusual for game companies to literally have no idea what is going on with their projects. "Easter Eggs" originally started out as things coders and artists put into the game without telling the development team or publisher. I've long taken the approach that if something, even if irreverant or a nod to another game, winds up getting mentioned in the cluebooks or whatever then it's not a real easter egg. REAL Easter eggs have included things like additional audio files with messages from the creator, or game characters saying creepy/out of character things (or their voice actor in the character voice more specifically), extra graphics files, or even text messages hidden in the game code itself if you go in with programs like the ancient "D-Sector".
Of course you don't see this as often because of the possibility of being sued, and of course the reaction it might get from some people. One famous example of an "easter egg" in a game was a gay mission/kiss (guy on guy) for the game "Simcopter" which caused quite a stir at the time, being roughly the equivilent of the penis in the back of the Disney "Little Mermaid" artwork.
The point is that the DLC might have been put into the game without EA as a whole knowing about it, with the coders who did it fully knowing people would find and unlock it. This could have been done for a lot of reasons, such as it being easy to do and the artists wanting their work to be seen by PC users, to a protest against the way companies are doing DLC in games. Which brings me to the second thing I wanted to say:
This right here is an example of why I think things like paid DLC and cash shops are out of control. The very existance of "already on the disc DLC" shows that the attitude isn't one where the company is developing DLC to extend the playtime of games, but rather finding things they can hold back/cut out/whatever and sell seperatly for money. Even with extra weapons packs and the like, I find it quite annoying when they are already on the disc and your basically paying for something that you already bought.
I'll also say that I'd imagine this annoys some artists as well, some guy sits down and designs all these armor and weapon models, and wants them to be seen, and then the developer says "well, we're going to lock the stuff you did out of the game unless someone pays $5 a pop to see it", which of course means that a good portion of the player base probably isn't going to experience what you made, when you thought it was going to be a main part of the game. Irritation like that, especially if it was going to be omitted from an entire platform, could lead to relatively minor acts of rebellion... and that could be what we're seeing here.
That's just my thoughts on the matter, I very much doubt EA would go through all the trouble of lying about this. What's more they seem pretty stupid because even if they hadn't intended it, this would have been the point where a company that greedy and two brain cells to rub together would have screamed "piracy, get out of our code hackers" and then immediatly put up DLC unlock packs for whatever price.
I mean I'm glad they haven't done that on a lot of levels actually, but it would have been more of a common sense reaction than the current "we deny it despite it being right in front of us" and making it clear that they really have no idea what's going on with their team. Except in extreme cases, companies tend to wisely keep their mouthes shut about real easter eggs in their products.
That's been going on for a few years actually I forgot which game(never played it) but some City Street Racer with Licensed cars in it had most or all of the DLC cars they had in the first packs we're already on the discs but needed to be unlocked by buying them only no otherwise means of getting them from in-game.Jumwa said:
Edit: Woot 1000th post!
Maybe they were going to give it to us free later? I don't really care for paid stuff unless it is like Fallout 3/Borderlands DLC. Off subject, but I have yet to finish the first Dead Space, but when I started the second up to test if it would work without the CD it game me a refurbished plasma cutter? So I get a free gun for installing the game?
Hey im currently stuck with the dreaded 'eternal loading screen' when I try and load a game. This has rendered it unplayable. So EA can go and jerk their gherkin until they fix that problem.VincentX3 said:
you call that ham fisted? when unlock codes for some unannounced characters surfaced for super street fighter iv arcade edition (never realized how long that title was until i had to type it!) people started putting up match videos on youtube and the info was spread throughout the fighting game communities, and being heavily covered on srk. they were up for two days (about 14 years in internetz time) before capcom realized what was going on and they started slamming people with copy right claims. during the witch hunt alot of high profile youtube accounts ended up being taken down, accounts owned by people who LOVE street fighter, by people who had spent YEARS putting up videos and working for a community that just managed to stay ALIVE when capcom and friends decided they didn't want to make fighting games anymore and wanted to make a million resident evil games instead.
EPIC FAIL
so basically alot of people know about these characters, but were gonna have to pretend we dont and act all surprised when capcom decides to say ok they exist now give us your munyies for them
EPIC FAIL
so basically alot of people know about these characters, but were gonna have to pretend we dont and act all surprised when capcom decides to say ok they exist now give us your munyies for them
Just want to put this out here: I've tried out the expanded save file and I've gotta say that the DLC is crap. A few modded stats on guns (+10% damage, -5% reload time etc) and a few pieces of armour with stat boosts, the best of which is +10% weapon damage to all guns - most are limited to just a couple.
Not worth being worked up over, not worth spending money on. The only unique thing is a rivet gun, that basically seems to be a neutered javelin gun without the awesome zapping action :/
Fail at DLC, really.
Not worth being worked up over, not worth spending money on. The only unique thing is a rivet gun, that basically seems to be a neutered javelin gun without the awesome zapping action :/
Fail at DLC, really.
If the DLC is on the PC disk, then that means that its also on the console disks. Which means that they're charging us for content we've already bought. Which means fuck them.
What grinds my gears on this topic is that its DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT that exists IN FULL in the game AT SHIPMENT AT RETAIL.
This DEFEATS The purpose of DOWNLOADABLE content.
I have no problem with DLC in general. But, it should be a downloadable addition to the game, NOT a paid unlock.
This DEFEATS The purpose of DOWNLOADABLE content.
I have no problem with DLC in general. But, it should be a downloadable addition to the game, NOT a paid unlock.
Interesting post. As far as the Easter Eggs theory, I believe in general, that may be true...to an extant. At this time in our economy, one is seemingly putting their (and possibly others) career at risk in an effort to rebel in that sort of way to the video game industry. While EA/Visceral was lucky to lose no money on this faux pas, others like Take2/Rockstar had to do an enormous recall in addition to getting sued over the "Hot Coffee" incident. Take a guess to what happened to all the developer staff involved with that incident.Therumancer said:
But here's a theory of my own to bounce back to you. EA knew the whole time that this "DLC content" of bonus packs were on the discs the whole time on both versions with the intention of selling them as DLC content. However right before release, it is brought up that the PC locked version can be easily be bypassed. Since it's too late (or rather then too expensive...maybe both) to recall the game, EA decides to keep hush about the PC's vulnerability and announce that the game packs are console exclusive. Because if they announced for both, and when (not if) the vulnerability was discovered, they would face a backlash of intentionally holding back content in addition to losing profit, all while creating an even more controversial stance on DLC.
If this theory is correct, the following actions that EA has done up to this point has been the best thing that EA could do. In other words, EA knowingly messed up. EA knew that they could either lose little or lose big. They chose to lose little.
I say we just break the code add it to the game and have fun, if they're denying it's existence then it's free game.
sadly I cant find a working download... I was thinking yesterday "where are all the new guns and better armour!?" and then I realised they were all paid dlc thats only out on consoles.
finding out about this has made me think twice about buying EA games on pc... I should have learned from crysis...
finding out about this has made me think twice about buying EA games on pc... I should have learned from crysis...
Well, charging for on-disc content is dickish beyond belief. Day one DLC is only justified to me if it was being developed past when the game went gold.
Everyone should just use the guy's save file then I suppose. They won't charge for it, they shouldn't charge for it really.
Everyone should just use the guy's save file then I suppose. They won't charge for it, they shouldn't charge for it really.
This. A similar thing happened with NFS: Shift (also published by EA). EA says they didn't release paid DLC because they didn't have a system in place to handle the transactions ( bit of a silly reason, but that's the reason they gave). The game (being a port of the consoles) had all the folders and elements to handle the dlc. Later some crafty gamer was able to transfer xbox files to the PC and viola, instant DLC. Basically, it is an effortless process to get the DLC to PC gamers, but perhaps not so easy to sell it.Sebenko said:
EA has a long and storied history of locking out content then charging you to unlock it as "DLC." In my case i will point to skate 2 a good game a fun game but the company that made it was jacked around by EA just before the game came out. All the day 1 dlc was just stuff they took out or locked out of the game code, there was nothing to download, and half the stuff they sold you back was stuff that was in the old game like the editor stuff so unless you bought the "dlc" you only got half the editor. Then the other day one dlc as i recall was classic skate 1 outfits and other goofy junk that proably was supposed to be in the game to begin with.
EA has a long history with its sport games of fing over people, if your on console you get mediocre games with little innovation and get to pay 60 bucks a year for an updated roster and probably one of two features they took out of the game 5 10 years ago then put them back in as "new." Then if you were on pc you got ports of playstation 2 games while xbox and ps 3 got "hd" games, then EA said you know what skrew it we will not even make pc sports games anymore.
And if your a gamer in general EA does not even like competition, the sole buying up of the NFL license so they do not have to anything but rebrand the game each year wo any other companies to make a better NFL game. Like to drive porsches? EA owns those to so they will only appear in EA games, if you want to have them in other game you have to pay porsche and pay EA to get the permission to use those cars in any non EA game and i would bet you got to pay EA as much or more as porsche for that right.
Oh and i never got my crysis preorder stuff from what was it 4 years ago now? Even tho i had contacted them and gotten reassurances i would be getting my preorder stuff, but then it got tho the point i could just not give a flying fuck anymore to contact them a 3rd or 4th time.
EA is the spawn of satan looking to nickle and dime you and stifle competition any chance it gets. Granted they still have some developers under their umbrella that make great games, but EA themselves are aholes.
Oh and just to add the pc version was probably ported over from xbox or ps and the DLC stuff might have just been code left in cause lets face it lots of times pc stuff gets released with "artifacts" of the DLC in the game left over just from the porting and not because they had any intention of putting it out for pc at all. See the gta4 pc that had like half or the whole of the DLC in it despite there being zero plans to release that DLC for pc.
EA has a long history with its sport games of fing over people, if your on console you get mediocre games with little innovation and get to pay 60 bucks a year for an updated roster and probably one of two features they took out of the game 5 10 years ago then put them back in as "new." Then if you were on pc you got ports of playstation 2 games while xbox and ps 3 got "hd" games, then EA said you know what skrew it we will not even make pc sports games anymore.
And if your a gamer in general EA does not even like competition, the sole buying up of the NFL license so they do not have to anything but rebrand the game each year wo any other companies to make a better NFL game. Like to drive porsches? EA owns those to so they will only appear in EA games, if you want to have them in other game you have to pay porsche and pay EA to get the permission to use those cars in any non EA game and i would bet you got to pay EA as much or more as porsche for that right.
Oh and i never got my crysis preorder stuff from what was it 4 years ago now? Even tho i had contacted them and gotten reassurances i would be getting my preorder stuff, but then it got tho the point i could just not give a flying fuck anymore to contact them a 3rd or 4th time.
EA is the spawn of satan looking to nickle and dime you and stifle competition any chance it gets. Granted they still have some developers under their umbrella that make great games, but EA themselves are aholes.
Oh and just to add the pc version was probably ported over from xbox or ps and the DLC stuff might have just been code left in cause lets face it lots of times pc stuff gets released with "artifacts" of the DLC in the game left over just from the porting and not because they had any intention of putting it out for pc at all. See the gta4 pc that had like half or the whole of the DLC in it despite there being zero plans to release that DLC for pc.