Stolen Pixels: A Hat for Every Head

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The issue is that DLC has been getting out of control, with companies releasing things like alternate character skins and costumes as additional paid-for DLC. Things that should already be in the game, especially if the content is availible on day #1.

Why? There is no "should". They are private companies, they can do what they like as long as it's legal. Nobody is forcing you to deal with them.

 

[The Deadpool]

This has a little to do with the current dicussion about Valve and Portal 2, at least directly, but I do think that right now one of the reasons why we're hearing all this "QQ" about metabombing is that user reviews are becoming notably out of sync with what are purchused reviews/advertising, which looks bad. "Portal 2" being a minor example compared to "Dragon Age 2" but still noteworthy because the point differances were noticed, and it's not something that can be excused by trolling.

Well, the situation between Portal 2 and Dragon Age 2 are actually slightly different. Portal 2 received largely positive reviews from users, with the exception of people who gave it low grades citing the DLC and ARG (and not any actual game content) as the reason why.

Dragon Age 2 received user reviews that were, for the most part, BELOW the "professional average" from users. THEN, Bioware was caught trying to pad the results using their own employees. THEN peopple gave it low grades citing that (and not any actual game content) as the reason why.

As far as the DLC goes, understand something, I am a capitalist, but I believe that it needs to be reasonably balanced. Totally unfettered capitalism leads to a few greedy jerks ruining everything for everyone. That's why there are protections against monopolies, price setting, cartel behavior, and similar things. As time goes on, new angles need to be addressed.

The problem is that, in this case, this isn't capitalism going crazy. This is charing the right people for the right content.

See, you (and a LOT of people arguing against this) have this crazy dream that there was a chance of getting this all for free. There wasn't. There NEVER WAS. Anything that costs a company money will, in one way or another, cost the consumer money. Maybe it'll be direct (Portal 2 would've been 60 dollars, or the cosmetic content would be severely smaller, or more likely both), maybe it'll be INDIRECT (game is less polished, next game comes out later, not as common with the updates, etc) but anything that adds costs to production will, in one way or another, add cost to the consumer.

So someone, somewhere was going to pay for this content. Period. Guaranteed. The question is never IF it'll be paid for, it's "by whom". And the way they pulled it off, it's being paid by, *gasp* the people who WANT the damned thing.

That's not a bad thing. That's something I wish every company would do with every product.

It's like complaining you have to pay extra for pepperoni...

 

[Arcanz]

The avatar dress-up items are only available in the multiplayer portion of Portal 2, which is reportedly five hours long. This isn't Team Fortress 2, where people will come back again and again.

5 hour long co-op campaign? Did everyone suddenly forget that Portal 2 is going to have custom map support through a Portal 2 SDK? People WILL come back again and again. It's like l4d and l4d2, they had set campaigns made by Valve, but a huge variety of custom made campaigns made from the community. Same goes for TF2, most (or all) of the more popular maps is community made.

 

[mcnally86]

Remember how games used to come compleate and not "sold separately" ?

Incidentally hat fortress has turned into an MMOFPS. So Valve fan boys shove it up your buts, you can't tell me your game doesn't have grinding anymore cause it does! At least the hat I have in my MMORPG has stats on it.

 

[Aptspire]

Honestly, I'd rather pay 5$ to play as the Space Sphere

 

[duchaked]

more levels and puzzles in the form of DLC...sure!

hats...no! but I ain't belly achin' about it lol

 

[Gralian]

Buying hats is a form of donation, only, you're getting something for them. That's why they're more expensive than a hat "should" be. You're donation, plus getting a virtual show for it.

And they started out as a rare collectible to show your dedication to playing TF2. And it caught on

A donation? A donation?! We're not getting the bloody game for free, it's not going to a worthy cause or a charity, we still have to pay £30 for it (£40 for consoles). The difference between TF2 and Portal is that we got all the content updates for free up until the Mann Co store. With Portal? Sorry, i don't buy that one little bit. Also, last i checked, Valve wasn't exactly doing badly for themselves. Nearly anything and everything they make sells like hot cakes - not to mention whatever tidy profit they make from purchases made through the steam store. This is just greediness, plain and simple.

 

[Logic 0]

I'll admit gabe newell turning down my marriage proposal would make me angry at valve to.

 

[swampus]

whoaaa haha i really love humor when it revolves around unfunny strawman arguments.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Good job as usual Shamus.

Can't say I understand it either.

 

[Knight Templar]

I've encountered the "I want it but don't want to pay" argument way too often.

Dragon Age 2 received user reviews that were, for the most part, BELOW the "professional average" from users. THEN, Bioware was caught trying to pad the results using their own employees. THEN people gave it low grades citing that (and not any actual game content) as the reason why.

I feel I should point out one Bioware employee made a review.
Thats not Bioware, thats a person.

 

[Mistwraithe]

The problem with complaining about DLC is that a lot of people seem to act like it's not optional. The only thing compelling them to purchase it is their own sense of entitlement, yet it's somehow the fault of the people who made more stuff for them to enjoy. One idiot over at Kotaku said something about Valve "raping [our] wallets".

I get you.

BUT there are some people out there for whom a large part of the challenge/fun/whatever of computer games is beating the game by doing all or as much of it as possible. This was fine before DLC, there was often some really hard to find stuff that people had to spend ages over to get that sense of achievement but that was their choice and it was part of the game. I'll emphasise this, it was all part of the original purchase cost of the game.

Now DLC is being used to change this. Game developers are making achieving that last bit of satisfaction cost EXTRA MONEY now. No longer is the entire game included in the original purchase price, if you want to do all or most of a game now you have to keep forking over money as you go.

When the purchase price of some of the extras is completely out of sync with the actual gameplay value derived from them (eg apparently all these Portal 2 hats cost almost as much as the original game yet make only a cosmetic gameplay difference) then it appears the game company is out to completely rip off the competionist gamer.

So yeah, I can see their point, and if I was one of them then I would be complaining very loudly too.

Imagine if Mass Effect 3 came out with the FPS gameplay built in BUT you had to pay extra everytime you wanted to access the character building/leveling part of the game? Fine for the FPS people, but you are going to get some serious complaints from those who get their enjoyment from the leveling!

 

[WaderiAAA]

I love the space bot. For him the game had a happy ening.

 

[DTWolfwood]

The main gripe i have with Valve's DLC is not that its there, but that they said that they would never use DLCs because apparently all of them are only made to nickel and dime the customer, despite many excellent DLCs having been made. So when they make DLC content, they not only go back on their (frankly arrogant) statements, but they come out with weak-sauce DLCs such as 5$ hats.

Seriously, they could not have fucked this up more.

i don't remember valve forcing me to buy their $5 hats so my game experience would be complete. In fact i don't remember noticing there being a store until after i've already beaten both campaigns in the game and reading about the "controversy" here on the escapist.

Seriously what does the hat store being their have anything to do with what you have played? did some1 you know who bought the hat suddenly become faster, jump higher, or can shoot 3 portals instead of 2 in the Coop campaign?

or are you just one of those ppl who complain about something because every other dimwit is?

 

[MasterV]

Now DLC is being used to change this. Game developers are making achieving that last bit of satisfaction cost EXTRA MONEY now. No longer is the entire game included in the original purchase price, if you want to do all or most of a game now you have to keep forking over money as you go.

At last, someone who talks sensibly. Bravo, sir.

 

[Phishfood]

Imagine if Mass Effect 3 came out with the FPS gameplay built in BUT you had to pay extra everytime you wanted to access the character building/leveling part of the game? Fine for the FPS people, but you are going to get some serious complaints from those who get their enjoyment from the leveling!

That would be wrong. I need the level up screen to complete the game.

I do NOT need a hat to complete the game. There is a HUGE difference, the two are nothing alike.

Valve have a history of releasing a very good SDK with every game which means that community maps are plentiful and free, so lets examine the choices:
1) Game like COD with no SDK and if you want extra levels you have to wait for the dev to make them and then pay for them
2) Game like TF/P 2 where the SDK is available, maps are free and you have the OPTION of paying for silly hats that have 0 impact on the game.

As others have said, if the game included NO hats there would be no complaints.

As for DLC being "out of hand" or games being "sold finished" I remember the games you are talking about. Those are the games that had a very finite ammount of gameplay. TF2 has "endless"* replay since there are thousands of maps out there.

 

[Orinon]

It's the will of the market, if people wanna give their money to Valve for some goofy hats Valve has every right to take it. Capitalism is very prominent, there are things I don't like about it but this is a relatively honest thing, pay five dollars get a silly hat, don't want a hat have fun anyway.

 

[Therumancer]

[
The problem is that, in this case, this isn't capitalism going crazy. This is charing the right people for the right content.

See, you (and a LOT of people arguing against this) have this crazy dream that there was a chance of getting this all for free. There wasn't. There NEVER WAS. Anything that costs a company money will, in one way or another, cost the consumer money. Maybe it'll be direct (Portal 2 would've been 60 dollars, or the cosmetic content would be severely smaller, or more likely both), maybe it'll be INDIRECT (game is less polished, next game comes out later, not as common with the updates, etc) but anything that adds costs to production will, in one way or another, add cost to the consumer.

So someone, somewhere was going to pay for this content. Period. Guaranteed. The question is never IF it'll be paid for, it's "by whom". And the way they pulled it off, it's being paid by, *gasp* the people who WANT the damned thing.

That's not a bad thing. That's something I wish every company would do with every product.

It's like complaining you have to pay extra for pepperoni...

Incorrect actually, as demonstrated by the simple fact that things like alternative costumes have been part of the package of games since someone came up with the idea of alternative skins, until recently.

Really the only arguement that people can try and make about this is that it's unreasonable for people to be upset about features that have been a standing part of products all this time, deciding to remove them and charge extra for them. It would be like Microsoft deciding to take the defrag, or notepad function out of Windows. Technically you don't need them, despite people wanting them, or their continued prescence.

You can say "this is differant" and come up with all kinds of justifications. Those justifications being backed by fanboyism, being a part of the industry even indirectly (such as a paid reviewer), or simply someone who figures that it's too much trouble for what they see as little potential gain right now. A gamer who wants immediate gratification *right now* doesn't want to take a stance that would ultimatly involve them not buying games and go without as a matter of principle.

To be honest, the peperoni analogy is kind of flawed because a Pizza has never had that included by default, a Pizza being a type of dish as opposed to one that includes a paticular kind of meat by default. A better analogy would probably be something like a Reuban Sandwich where you suddenly had to pay more money for the dressing or saurkraut, given that a reuban is a very specific type of sandwich.

I get where the other side is coming from with this kind of thing, I just happen to disagree with it. My personal attitude is that paid DLC should exclusively be substantial additions to the game, created after the fact. If that includes new skins as part of the package, so be it. New levels, continents, and other things are all reasonable.

My personal litmus test (so to speak) is to ask the question "back before digital downloads took off, would this DLC be something they would have felt would have been worth distributing as a seperate product on physical media". If the answer is "no" then I feel there is a problem.

It very much is a case of capitalism going out of control. Believe it or not, I *DO* believe in capitalism to an extreme degree, I just don't believe in unfettered capitalism. I believe that for the system to be sustained and actually avoid destroying itself, there needs to be limitations placed on it, rules against things like monopolies and cartels, and of course to prevent a handfull of greedy jerks from effectively destroying an industry they happen to be in by starting negative trends.

 

[Therumancer]

The issue is that DLC has been getting out of control, with companies releasing things like alternate character skins and costumes as additional paid-for DLC. Things that should already be in the game, especially if the content is availible on day #1.

Why? There is no "should". They are private companies, they can do what they like as long as it's legal. Nobody is forcing you to deal with them.

Well, by saying that I think the goverment should be involved in preventing digital downloads from getting out of control, as much as I hate the goverment being involved in business, I have also been argueing that it shouldn't be legal.

See, I'm a believer in capitalism, but not in unfettered capitalism. I believe that for such a system to work, self-destructive trends like monopolies, cartels, and similar things need to be regulated. This also includes limiting trends within a specific industry that are going to have an overall negative effect.

This can be subjective of course, but one of the big challenges of capitalism is to prevent a handfull of greedy jerks who find an angle from ruining it for everyone. Human nature being what it is, most people have no trouble raping an industry until it's dead, as long as they walk away with a fortune which they can presumably invest in something else. I see out of control DLC, and all of this nickel and diming as a trend which can destroy the developing games industry as all the bean counters who are already making more money than they could likely ever spend, turn making even more ridiculous amounts of money into a sort of persistant game for themselves. While it manifests differantly for differant industries, this kind of trend is never a good thing.

While it is difficult to solidly define in a law, the direction I think things need to go in is to create guidelines for a minimum amount of content that can be present in a paid-for digital download.

 

[The Deadpool]

Incorrect actually, as demonstrated by the simple fact that things like alternative costumes have been part of the package of games since someone came up with the idea of alternative skins, until recently.

Untrue.

Not EVERY game had alternative skins. And even those that did, MOST games just had a color swap. Hell, most games STILL don't.

Even if (and I sure can't think of one) you can point to a ONE game that has even half of the sheer amount of alternative skins that Portal 2 has for free, that'd still be one against five billion that didn't...

And it still doesn't answer the fact that Portal 2 is ten dollars cheaper than the industry average.

And it doesn't change the fact that it WAS NEVER FREE. You ALWAYS paid for it. The difference was, I used to have to pay for it too, even though I never wanted the damned thing. All Portal 2 (and several other games rescently) did was give me the CHOICE to NOT pay for it. Now, if you want it, YOU pay for it. If you don't, you don't have to pay a dime.

Consumer choice. It's a GOOD thing.