Dead Space 2 DLC for PC: The Story Thus Far

[SL33TBL1ND]

If it's all already in the game, there must be a way to unlock it. I checked the Steam forums and the save file the guy linked is no longer there.

If EA really is doing this because of pirating, they're not helping themselves by being pricks about it. If anything all this is making people reconsider their stance on pirating.

It is still there, just use the original file from Skitcat.

 

[Therumancer]

[
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.

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.

Well, there is no way to know for sure what is going on, your theory is also reasonably sound. Truthfully we're likely to never get an answer.

As far as "Hot Coffee" goes, I think that was something else entirely to be honest. To be blunt the video involved in "Hot Coffee" was not pornographic by US law. Nothing you could see in those sex mini-games went past what is allowed for an "R" or "M" rating. If you look at movies there are FAR more intense sex scenes out there, and the whole "erotic thriller" genere has ben criticized in the past for pretty much skirting around the technicalities between what makes a movie "adults only" or "X" rated and what is an "R" rating (legally porn is something else entirely). In general to get an "X" rating something has to clearly show penetration, without that, it's not an "X" rated movie. If you have netflix check out a movie called "The Ghost In The Teeny Bikini" (or something close to that) it's exactly a banal as it sounds, but it's a good example of the limits of the "R" rating. Some of Troma's productions also push that to the literal limit as well.

"Hot Coffee" was one of two major incidents where I think the gaming industry failed it's own long term interests, and us the consumers. They could have fought the complaints being made, and they would have won. Simply put there was absolutly nothing in any of the content in question (and I've seen most of it) that could have been used to successfully win a case. Absolutly nothing. Rock Star for all of their comments about creative freedom, and pushing the envelope, chose to back down. Generally speaking it was probably about money because they didn't want to fight the case despite the huge amounts of dough they were swimming in, selling out free expression for more money they could keep in their pockets. There are also a number of hints that this went down the way it did for political reasons, being very left wing, and having Hillary Clinton running point for a lot of that. This was really the first truely major left wing censorship campaign that got public attention, this kind of thing is usually the domain of the other side of the political fence, at least in the minds of a lot of people.

The other incident was Konami/Team Silent censoring "Silent Hill 2". When they released the demo for SH2 it raised some eyebrows, not due to sex, but due to violence, and the depiction of mutilated children (which you beat down as monsters). There was no reason why they couldn't have published that game under an "M" rating, but rather than fight the point they chose to back down.

I think between those two incidents, at differant times, they paved the way for a lot of the censorship efforts your seeing now. I also think the successes encouraged the left wing to use video games as a boogieman to avoid other issues, and present the illusion of doing something. This kind of thing always went cross party to some extent, but in general it was mostly right wingers (from my reading) that got involved in the whole crusade against "Night Trap" and similar kinds of games during the live video/early CD era and pretty much got slapped silly. This time it was the left wing doing the probing, and the successes with Hot Coffee have lead to a lot of the intertia you see now.

Agree or disagree on the politics, it's not really important, that's just how I see things. The point is that no matter who is playing the role of inquisitor I think those are the two major points, where the industry should have fought, and did not, paving the way for a lot of the problems we're facing now.

Of course this is entirely a side rant, which has nothing to do with the issue of EA and it's DLC at all.

I don't think Rock Star pushed their easter eggs too far and got burned so to speak, I think "Hot Coffee" was fully intentional, but the company decided to sell out, and cleaning house in their offices was part of that.

 

[SelectivelyEvil13]

Content that is already coded into the game but not accessible until an additional fee is paid is NOT "Downloadable Content," it is a crock. It's saddening how consumers will still fund this type of behavior that is ruining the concept of "DLC" for games. Given that the content in question is just a bunch of armors apparently, then really this amounts to withholding the "extra goodies" you might get for beating a game on hard mode or something of the likes. What will be next, a $5 "bonus content" "DLC" to unlock alternative endings for the other difficulty modes?!? The actions taken by companies like EA are part of why I distance myself from DLC because I would rather not have my original price tag inflated for content already on the disc I paid for in the first place.

$60 for a game sound pricey? Well at least it's not, say, $75...
[sub]$60 price tag is not representative of the full product upon additional digital content purchases beginning with one $15 package followed by at least three subsequent $10 packages.[/sub]

 

[yellowhead]

Why are developers and publishers dicks to PC gamers?

It really annoys me when developers don't support a platform like PC especially since nearly everyone at least has a PC and nearly all PC gamers own Steam. The last time i got annoyed at something like this was when i bought 'Transformers: War For Cybertron' (great game btw) and there was no DLC for it but the consoles got it.

PC gaming is FAR from dying but developers continue to neglect the platform.

 

[ImprovizoR]

Do you know why is EA denying the fact that they were going to release the DLC?

Simple: because if they admitted it, it would mean they were going to sell sell us the content that was in the game that we already purchased.

EDIT: apparently I was ninja'd again.

 

[EvolutionKills]

Maybe they were planning a "Game of the Year" edition with the game plus all DLC, which would also be released on PC?

It would be a crap-tastic and absolutely pointless GoTY Edition if it doesn't include 'Severed', or any of the other extra chapter DLC that might come out.

 

[Wicky_42]

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...

It shouldn't be hard to find it, but to be frank the stuff's shit - I wouldn't pay for it, now that I know what's in it. Most of it's just guns with 5 or 10% modified stats, and some armour with similar adjustments - load of crap to ask for money for some stat changes; it's like the laziest modding ever, and they were asking for money for it. Even for free it's lame to have 3 variations of a gun with "+10% primary damage" then "+10% secondary damage" and then "-5% reload". Blegh. Only 1 new gun, the rivet gun - seems pretty rubbish, no amputation, low damage... again, not worth money - not even worth using for free :/

Soooo yeah, not impressed with the DLC, but to say you're planning on ignoring EA in the future is I think not the right attitude. The DLC was crap, but the game was fantastic - that's not something I'd give up on in the future.

 

[Wicky_42]

Left in because it was too much effort to remove.

Also too much effort to sort out selling it.

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.

Maybe their main concern with their transaction system was that there was no way to have DRM on the DLC - once it was out, it was just a simple copy-paste job to share it with everyone and so it would be impossible to make money on it. So rather than just making a gesture of good will to PC gamers and blaming fees for consoles on the network costs, they just blanked us and sat on their easy-to-transfer data. Bastards. Nice to see the practice so easy to expose.

 

[Exort]

I have the PC version, and Downloaded the savegame file, and it works great. If EA offered the DLC, I would NOT do this to unlock them, however, they left the files in the game, and refused to give us the option to buy them. Even if they released them, and they were heavily pirated, one sale would lot them more money than they're getting now. I would bu Severed if it were released for PC, but I guess EA (Visceral?) didn't learn from Bioware, did they? Guess they don't want more of my money, it's a shame.

why doesn't more companies use the bioware way? i.e.

maybe bioware copyrighted that method of purchase. The copyright wars between companies are a nasty business that only brings suffering to the customer and less money for all.

Do you understand Bioware is now apart of EA?
It is their RPG/MMO department.

 

[Blue Baby]

EA that doesn't want to squeeze more money out of one of their games?

The investment on making dlc available also on pc is so little that there would be only profit releasing them for us as well.
Maybe they just think thay don't have a strong enought platform to deliver them?Just buy some new servers, geez...also Visceral keeps acting like the good doggie that just sits near its owner feet.


This is both nonsense and pathetic

 

[GonzoGamer]

The console makers probably just paid them not to release it for PC, like Microsoft always does for everything, most recently Fallout New Vegas.

But EA bungled and included it anyways.

Though the notion of "DLC" that's already in a game just strikes me as that ridiculous thing we all feared publishers would do years ago: use DLC as an excluse to charge us for things that were already in game from day one.

My thoughts exactly. It?s probably for reasons like this that they?re trying to get everyone to game on the 360 than the PC: less chance of hacking.
However, it?s things like this that are turning some away from consoles and more towards PC gaming.
It appears that hooking all the consoles to the internet hasn?t been the best thing to happen to the gaming consumer. It?s led to broken games like New Vegas being released before they are finished because they can patch it rather than recall it. It?s led to added expenses like online service to some. And it?s led to games having less features so they can be sold later.
And they wonder why we can?t take them seriously when they whine about used game sales.

 

[Jumwa]

My thoughts exactly. It?s probably for reasons like this that they?re trying to get everyone to game on the 360 than the PC: less chance of hacking.
However, it?s things like this that are turning some away from consoles and more towards PC gaming.
It appears that hooking all the consoles to the internet hasn?t been the best thing to happen to the gaming consumer. It?s led to broken games like New Vegas being released before they are finished because they can patch it rather than recall it. It?s led to added expenses like online service to some. And it?s led to games having less features so they can be sold later.
And they wonder why we can?t take them seriously when they whine about used game sales.

All well said.

These are the fears we had when DLC and patching first came along, and publishers and their supporters scoffed and said it'd only be used to enhance the experience by providing added support.

 

[GonzoGamer]

My thoughts exactly. It?s probably for reasons like this that they?re trying to get everyone to game on the 360 than the PC: less chance of hacking.
However, it?s things like this that are turning some away from consoles and more towards PC gaming.
It appears that hooking all the consoles to the internet hasn?t been the best thing to happen to the gaming consumer. It?s led to broken games like New Vegas being released before they are finished because they can patch it rather than recall it. It?s led to added expenses like online service to some. And it?s led to games having less features so they can be sold later.
And they wonder why we can?t take them seriously when they whine about used game sales.

All well said.

These are the fears we had when DLC and patching first came along, and publishers and their supporters scoffed and said it'd only be used to enhance the experience by providing added support.

It was always that way for the PC games and that was usually honored. It seems that publishers think that console gamers are pants on head retarded. And maybe they're right: they wouldn't still be pulling crap like this if people didn't buy it.

Really I can only think of a couple games that didn't completely rip people off when it came to dlc on the consoles. Like Borderlands: $10 for a completely optional pack with large new areas, enemies, weapons, and usually another weird feature. That's the only game where I've gotten all the dlc. And I feel like I got my moneys worth.

 

[Jumwa]

Really I can only think of a couple games that didn't completely rip people off when it came to dlc on the consoles. Like Borderlands: $10 for a completely optional pack with large new areas, enemies, weapons, and usually another weird feature. That's the only game where I've gotten all the dlc. And I feel like I got my moneys worth.

Strangely enough, same for me. Borderlands was the only time I ever explicitly went out of my way to buy all the DLC available, though sadly, my partner lost interest in playing the game further so I haven't really had a chance to explore it all with her.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Really I can only think of a couple games that didn't completely rip people off when it came to dlc on the consoles. Like Borderlands: $10 for a completely optional pack with large new areas, enemies, weapons, and usually another weird feature. That's the only game where I've gotten all the dlc. And I feel like I got my moneys worth.

Strangely enough, same for me. Borderlands was the only time I ever explicitly went out of my way to buy all the DLC available, though sadly, my partner lost interest in playing the game further so I haven't really had a chance to explore it all with her.

I forgot to mention: even if you didn't buy any dlc, they released a patch to raise the level cap anyway.
My wife never got into Borderlands (which is weird because her favorite games on the ps3 are Blops and Fallout 3) but I have a friend I played through with online and another friend who comes by more often played through it with me and we're now on our second set of characters together. So I've tried every class and have definitely gotten my money's worth.

 

[Jumwa]

My wife never got into Borderlands (which is weird because her favorite games on the ps3 are Blops and Fallout 3) but I have a friend I played through with online and another friend who comes by more often played through it with me and we're now on our second set of characters together. So I've tried every class and have definitely gotten my money's worth.

I've been nothing but impressed with the makers of Borderlands, and don't regret a penny I spent on the games. Though my partner got turned off as we reached level cap and all of the weapons we got were still a dozen or more levels below us and upgrades weren't happening. I believe some of the DLCs have solved this issue, but I haven't been able to rope her back into starting from scratch (as a hard drive wipe lost us our original characters).

 

[GonzoGamer]

My wife never got into Borderlands (which is weird because her favorite games on the ps3 are Blops and Fallout 3) but I have a friend I played through with online and another friend who comes by more often played through it with me and we're now on our second set of characters together. So I've tried every class and have definitely gotten my money's worth.

I've been nothing but impressed with the makers of Borderlands, and don't regret a penny I spent on the games. Though my partner got turned off as we reached level cap and all of the weapons we got were still a dozen or more levels below us and upgrades weren't happening. I believe some of the DLCs have solved this issue, but I haven't been able to rope her back into starting from scratch (as a hard drive wipe lost us our original characters).

When my friend reached the level cap for his Soldier he wanted to start again from the beginning with the Hunter.
That's the one problem I had with the game, it was very easy to overlevel/underlevel and if you're overlevel you're not going to find guns for your level.
And I think that's why they added Crawmax for the General Knox pack. You can max out your levels right quick but you can also get the best guns.