Poll: The Problem with DLC Today

[Bonecrusher]

Entitled brats...

There, now I have your attention;

Games cost an absolute fortune to make, and with 0 money coming back to the publishers on pre-owned sales they have to bring in as much money as they can so that they can keep making games. No money = no new games, then what would you have to complain about on the internet? I'm going to breifly dissect the 3 arguments presented.

I really hate this kind of users.
They are not gamers, they are just... Users.

Because of this stupid logic, game companies push us crappy games and lazy marketing tactics.
You can encounter this argument in every topic:
"You are brats so you don't know how the world goes bla bla bla".

First of all, yes we know companies make these games for money.
But they are not just toilet papers, you know.
They are made for entertainment purposes, therefore you need to make them to appeal and satisfy your customers.

In the old times, there were three stages for game.
1- Full game, which is publushed with full content.
2- Free patches, if developers need to bugfix or put small contents.
3- Expansion packs, that have enough new content to sell as a new box.

Before, companies made lots of money and earned much with this formula, didn't they?
Some companies still use this formula and earns enough money, aren't they?

So, for God's sake, stop protecting companies behind the "money" argument.
It is just being silly.

Half-Life team used that formula and earned lots and lots of money.
Left 4 Dead team doesn't use the purchasable DLC formula, makes new maps as free patches, but they still earn money.
And I don't think the income is just from f2p'ed tf2 or steam, first half-life earned valve huge amount of money even before steam..
So this means you can earn money in the gaming business without day-1 DLC.

If we would go with your logic, Blizzard should get $10 for every patch.

By the way, I am not fully against DLC.
They can put new things to the game in the future.
The thing that I am against, is turning this to a franchise for milking the cow.

Also, I give them $60 and they give me cutted out game. And they want more more money for cutted content. That is why the gamers hate DLCs.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

-Snip-

I have to fully agree with you on that since the days of gaming gone y i remember being able to buy a game and have everything with it and now the games industry finds it a great idea to make us believe we get more for our game when it could have easily been included in the final draft of the game before release and for those that claim "oh they only just thought of the DLC to add to the game a while after it's release" that statement is void because they already thought of the DLC to add to the game while the game was being finished/added finishing touches.

I hated when i bought Resident Evil 5 knowing full well there was content on my disk that was sealed away from me and it's exactly what i hate about TF2 crates were they are locked to begin with only when you part some money to unlock it and the crate is "free" but the key is not means the crate was not free in the first place since without the key the crate is useless to begin with so it's not free.

What i really want for games is to be able to have full access to the game or if it's going to be DLC all over again at least have the game priced at say £30 and the many tid bits of DLC can amount to £10 so then i could possibly feel like i paid for a game that's already priced at £40-45 that doesn't have DLC.

Also the online pass crap kind of annoys me just a bit but not always it just depends on the game i buy that it could annoy me just a tad but always online games tend to be the final straw with me trying to buy said game.

You know what would be great for DLC instead of having it charged make it free instead and then you have to unlock it which would make for a nice challenge and day 1 DLC should always be free if it came to that.

 

[baddude1337]

DLC as a whole is a good idea, but companies are abusing it. The worst offender in my eyes are games that have the DLC already on the disc that you then have to pay to unlock, even more annoying when this 'DLC' is available sometimes before the game is even out.

 

[Jimbo1212]

Very true.
DLC is just a con to allow the companies to make more money by selling an unfinished game. However unless people stop pissing away their money on it, it will keep selling and the games industry will use it more and more often.

 

[zehydra]

I refuse to buy DLC in any shape or form, unless it's free. That's my stance on the subject.

Same. Been doing that since 2000. Hasn't really impaired by gaming experience at all.

 

[dillinger88]

I couldn't disagree more.

First off, retailers buy more new games than they'll sell, so the developer is getting money.

Secondly, yes you do pay a premium for something new, but that doesn't mean you lose part of the product if you buy used. If I buy a used car, the AC doesn't fall out. They've made their money off of that particular game. If the person who bought it didn't like it and wanted some money back, it's his business to sell it.

Thirdly, online pass is evil. The developer isn't doing any more work, but they want to charge more. Take Madden for example. In years past, you could play online and update rosters for free (I am paying 50 bucks a year for Xbox Live so free is debatable). This year, you have to have an online pass. Forgive me for wanting to play it, but waiting until I can get a cheap copy because nothing has changed from last year except the rosters. By the way, they shipped the game with outdated rosters anyway, so the first thing anyone will HAVE to do is update rosters or else the game is the same as last years.

Overall I feel developers are getting too greedy. The gaming industry is still making a lot of money without this crap. Used movies don't have less menu options I have to activate online. Used cars don't not work unless you activate it through the manufacturer for a fee. Used TV's don't lose some functions unless I go through the manufacturer and pay them. It's a joke, and you don't see it anywhere but in the games industry. Wanna know why? Because it's full of YOUNG KIDS who can be taken advantage of.

Before I talk about any of your points, I'd like to point out that I'm no "YOUNG KID who can be taken advantage of". Not sure if it was meant to be a dig at me, but I feel it needed to said anyway. Also, the reason we see it in the Games industry is because it's still not mainstream enough that you can count on enough people buying your product enough to pay off the budget.

Regarding your first point, I can't say that I know anything of the internal workings of a game retailer. I assume they do buy more copies than they sell but not much more, surely. I don't know the mark up on new games either, but when companies like Game in the UK and Gamestop in America actively try and persuade you to buy a used game for a few dollars/pounds less than the new version its just screwing the dev/publisher out of money to make more profit for the retailer. As I said I would prefer the dev/pub to get my money over the retailer so I buy new/digital download when ever I can.

When you by a used car/TV, you don't get the same benefits as buying it new. The warranty won't transfer and there will be some amount of wear. The majority of the product will be there, but definitely not all of it. Secondly, selling a new car/TV probably makes more profit for the manufacturer than a game would so I don't think it's a particularly good example.

I can't talk about Madden games in particular because I've never played that game. I have bought FIFA for the 2 years, though. The online pass is free if you buy it new, like the warranty in the car example so I don't see the problem.

I agree that it doesn't take more work. In fact it takes MORE work if anything to implement the online pass system. But I don't know how you can say that devs get enough money when there are so many closing down at the moment.

There's a LOT of speculation on my part, however there is just as much on yours. All I know is I want to support developers, not retailers. It's not the most elegant way of trying to persuade people to buy new, but I guess if you can't bank on YOUNG KIDS* to support you, you have to do something.

*Sorry, couldn't help it.

 

[dillinger88]

REPEAT POST

 

[hermes]

Remember when you bought a game, you bought the full game?

Yes, it was a time when Capcom charged full price for a couple new characters and called it "a new game". Also, it was a time when broken games where physically recalled to fix anything serious (if you were lucky)...

Also, DLC is planned now. It seems like when someone announces a game, they also announce DLC for it. What is happening?! You're planning on expanding your game when you have no idea of how many copies your game will sell!

Here is a clue on how this works... THEY DO plan on DLC before the game ships. Good DLC takes a lot of time to develop, and even when they don't know how many people will buy the game, they need to work on it before hands or announce it several months after the release (thus risking making it irrelevant). Because of that, they have a pretty established calendar for release dates, and they don't stop working once the game is released. Furthermore, most DLC starts being developed long before the game hits gold. There is no way the developers could plan, develop and release Undead Nightmare or Awakening mere 5 months after Red Dead and Dragon Age... While I think some of the practices are reprehensible, I don't agree with your introduction and I think is pretty inflammatory.

To answer the question, I don't like day 1 DLC, unless its free. I only think its acceptable if they release it later as a pack, although that doesn't always happen. I don't like DLC that unlocks content that is already on the disc (like RE5 or Soulcalibur 4), although time savers aren't that bad. I don't buy superfluous DLC (like skins, costumes or fatalities) and I think in most cases, DLC is overpriced. However, as long as it doesn't divide the online community, or it was something that should be included in the first place (like a proper ending or entire chapters - looking at you, Assassins Creed 2), I don't have a problem with the idea of DLC; if anything, I just don't buy it. Sure, you could argue the game is incomplete, but... do you really need to have Zangief as a robot to consider it "incomplete"? Does it seriously hinders your capacity to enjoy Oblivion if you can't place armor into your horse? We are not talking about EA charging for the Omega relay mission in ME2, but for Shepard to look like a Dragon Age's knight...

Consider the alternative, where all games are constantly delayed until every single feature the designers thought are included, until they use the latest available engine and technology. Such a game we used to call: DUKE NUKEM FOREVER.

 

[hermes]

Really? You want dlc that is created six months after the games comes out to be included on the disk? How the hell are they going to do that?

It's not created six months later though is it? In all likelihood it's half, or even mostly finished by the time the game releases. It's only released six months later so the publisher can market it as "fresh" content, despite the fact that it was probably supposed to be on the retail release anyway, but now that publishers know they can get away with charging even more for games and their content, the developers either copped out of finishing it, or the publisher said "don't bother finishing it, we want to get it out in time for X and we can sell it as DLC anyway".

Here is a simple fact for you... Making content for games is pretty damn HARD. Even if they start making it after the game is released, there is no way substantial DLC (like Shadow Broker, Shivering Isles, Minerva's Den or Undead Nightmare) could be completed in a couple months. That is why DLC planning and development gets pipelined into the development cycle, to have it finished soon after the game is released.

Also, your idea of unfinished development is flawed. Most DLC are additional content, not broken features. No one says "don't bother finishing it", because an unfinished game is notoriously worst than a short game. Portal is a short game; Daikatana is a broken game. What they say it "we need to finish by this date, and only have time to properly do A, B and C; X and Z will either be dropped or released later"

 

[Mogget128723]

I remember Battlezone. About a year after release, the developers released the Red Odyssey expansion, which had as much gameplay as the original game and cost half as much. THIS is how DLC should be done.

MechWarrior 4 would be another good example; the Black Knight expansion was not only an entirely new campaign, but threw in a pile of extra gameplay features as well.

 

[THAC0]

"should have been on the disk"

i stopped reading here. when you make a game, you can say what should and should not have been on the disc. This was debated about the Street Fighter costumes that were in fact on the disc, but in order to play with them you had to pay extra for them on line. lots of people didn't like that.

if you don't want something don't buy it. simple as that.

 

[4173]

I just don't care. They offer me a product and I make a purchasing decision. What the game "should have been" or w/e seems like an artificial construct to whine for free stuff.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I'm still kind of pissed at EA and Bioware for not giving me the option to download Zaeed for my copy of Mass Effect 2. Granted I could get him through the Cerberus Net thing but it's not worth the price.

I've bought DLC when I think it looked cool like the Shimmering Isles for Oblivion but for the most part I leave it alone.

 

[tzimize]

I HATE DLC!

I miss the days when I could download new colors for lightsabers in Jedi Knight, new maps in quake or new mods in Half life...FAN made stuff. Free.

I recently saw COD fans had bought map packs for 500 000 000 dollars or so. And I have only one thing to say. Fuck you. Thanks for ruining the platform for the rest of us.

Nowadays we get mediocre content at BEST...extremely overpriced. The only example I can think of where DLC is a good thing...is Guitar Hero/Rock band. You dont need a new game, you just need more music. This is relevant DLC. I cant think of a single other example where I havent wished for the swift death of whoever dreamed up the latest shitty DLC.

"should have been on the disk"

i stopped reading here. when you make a game, you can say what should and should not have been on the disc. This was debated about the Street Fighter costumes that were in fact on the disc, but in order to play with them you had to pay extra for them on line. lots of people didn't like that.

if you don't want something don't buy it. simple as that.

Yes, and no.

Its as simple as that because I can just not buy it. But the market is still changed (by idiots) who buy this crap. I remember the latest prince of persia game...where the finale was not final...there was a DLC ending. I raged so hard I almost had a heart attack. Not because prince of persia was the best thing ever...but because I couldnt finish the story I'd invested in because they wanted to string me along for a few extra bucks. Fuck that.

Edit: Would you honestly be OK with it if the last 20 pages of a very exciting book were missing and all that was there was a note from the Author saying: The final chapter is on sale in a bookstore near you for 20$! ;D

DLC at its worst is no better than this.

 

[mitchell271]

-snip-

Dude, read the whole thing. I'm not against DLC, I'm against what publishers do with it

-snip-

When I say planned DLC, I meant DLC that is announced before the game ships. I realize that DLC is planned just like any other part of the game and I appreciate the work that goes into it, but I don't want publishers to be doing what they are doing now, which is essentially taking out parts of the game to sell separately for more money. Remember what Bioshock 2 did? It shipped with the early DLC and when you buy the DLC, it downloads a key to unlock it. I raged so hard that day...

 

[Sgt. Dante]

Half-Life team used that formula and earned lots and lots of money.
Left 4 Dead team doesn't use the purchasable DLC formula, makes new maps as free patches, but they still earn money.
And I don't think the income is just from f2p'ed tf2 or steam, first half-life earned valve huge amount of money even before steam..
So this means you can earn money in the gaming business without day-1 DLC.

Yeah, but as business models change and games start to make more money BETTER games get made. compare half life 1 without steam to half life 2 with steam. Steam brings in money, which is the only reason that TF2 and L4D get 'free' updates, cause the company has the money to invest back into the games. They don't make any money on L4D bar the entry fee and the additional work is paid for because of the money spent in steam and on the other games. These people don't just come into work and say, well, this isn't making anymore money, lets just keep working on it in the hope a few more people will buy it then...

If we would go with your logic, Blizzard should get $10 for every patch.

They do, it's called your subscription fee.

Also, I give them $60 and they give me cutted out game. And they want more more money for cutted content. That is why the gamers hate DLCs.

Yeah, and you conveniently leave out my other 3 arguments... It's not just a money issue, it's a time and availability thing.

Of course they want more money if they do more work. cause that's what DLC is. Next time you're in work (presuming you're old enough to have a job) when the boss asks you to do more overtime you agree then say you'll do it for free. Sound like a fair deal? DLC is (usually) content that wasn't made in time or well enough to release with the finished product, perhaps buggy, perhaps imbalanced; these things take a lot of time to get right. And a LOT of work goes into these games.

to repeat myself again if you don't agree with it don't buy it but I'm happy to pay a little extra to make sure quality games keep getting made. And on that point don't you dare say I'm not a gamer. I'm doing what I can to support these artists and you seem hellbent on not spending anymore than you have to.

 

[DanteLives]

Make day 1 DLC free. But don't make it £12 for a few poxy maps.

 

[FalloutJack]

My stance remains that you should give me a whole and entire game or get the hell out. No nickel-and-diming stuff. I won't buy it EVER.

 

[Mikeyfell]

I like DLC it means more money is going to the developers and less to the publishers.

I say cheaper retail releases to compensate for the added expense of DLC.



So a game like (Oh for sake of example let's say) Dragon Age that's going to have 10 DLC's or what ever should retail for $40 out of the gate instead of $60 because they know they're going to make that loss back with DLC.

 

[4173]

I HATE DLC!

I miss the days when I could download new colors for lightsabers in Jedi Knight, new maps in quake or new mods in Half life...FAN made stuff. Free.

I recently saw COD fans had bought map packs for 500 000 000 dollars or so. And I have only one thing to say. Fuck you. Thanks for ruining the platform for the rest of us.

Nowadays we get mediocre content at BEST...extremely overpriced. The only example I can think of where DLC is a good thing...is Guitar Hero/Rock band. You dont need a new game, you just need more music. This is relevant DLC. I cant think of a single other example where I havent wished for the swift death of whoever dreamed up the latest shitty DLC.

"should have been on the disk"

i stopped reading here. when you make a game, you can say what should and should not have been on the disc. This was debated about the Street Fighter costumes that were in fact on the disc, but in order to play with them you had to pay extra for them on line. lots of people didn't like that.

if you don't want something don't buy it. simple as that.

Yes, and no.

Its as simple as that because I can just not buy it. But the market is still changed (by idiots) who buy this crap. I remember the latest prince of persia game...where the finale was not final...there was a DLC ending. I raged so hard I almost had a heart attack. Not because prince of persia was the best thing ever...but because I couldnt finish the story I'd invested in because they wanted to string me along for a few extra bucks. Fuck that.

Edit: Would you honestly be OK with it if the last 20 pages of a very exciting book were missing and all that was there was a note from the Author saying: The final chapter is on sale in a bookstore near you for 20$! ;D

DLC at its worst is no better than this.

If they were up front about, I would be okay with it. I wouldn't like it, and probably wouldn't purchase it, but I would be okay with it.