Games are expensive. We all know this. But the savvy gamer knows how to cut corners and save cash whilst still picking up the latest releases – to pick up a second hand copy a few weeks later, or trade in an old worn out game, or wait six months until the price has inevitably plummeted.
But there is one way in which every player is forced to pay top whack or else miss out entirely, and that is through downloadable content. Regardless of whether you come to collect your downloadable content (or DLC) on the day of release or two years later, you will always have to pay premium rate for these extras. And why? Because publishers know you’ll pay it.
Yes, in a world of hidden extras, the gaming industry has jumped on the bandwagon and made downloadable content just another pitfall for the consumer.
DLC comes in all sorts of varieties, from supplementary item packs or new weaponry, to new levels or missions, additional characters worked into the narrative, and more besides. Granted, these extras often add a great deal to your overall gaming experience and can be immensely fun, but are they really worth the asking prices? Obviously there are perks to DLC, but the negatives are sizeable.
Even on release week you can usually buy a brand new game with 40 odd hours of gameplay for under £40, but an extra two hour mission can cost you as much as £8.99. With at least four or five DLC additions now standard for a game, getting the full experience is going from being already arguably too expensive to becoming borderline extortionate. Completionist gamers are being put in a position where they end up having to pay practically the cost of the game itself again just to get everything out of the game that would have been standard before the invention of DLC.
Not only is DLC over-priced and will not be reduced over time, but its very existence provides an incentive for developers to leave content out of the initial release deliberately. This worrying trend of developers creating content on the disk but making it inaccessible without downloading the relevant code is just another way the industry is attempting to exploit gamers.
For example, Bioware’s Dragon Age was released with a code to download the golem Shale, one of the funniest, most intriguing characters in the game. Yet if you don’t have an internet link up for your console or bought your game second hand (making the one-time use code void) you will be one of many unlucky gamers with no idea who this pigeon-hating deadpan dwarf turned rock creature even is.
Not only did Batman Arkham City pull the same stunt with Catwoman’s code, as discussed in Game’s editorial last issue, but go to the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live and you’ll see that the game already has Robin available and ready to download. Now let’s be honest, no one is buying a Batman game so they can run around as his sidekick (even Robin probably buys Arkham City so that he can have a go at being Batman for once), but the issue remains.
The issue there is, simply, is it justifiable for a game to withhold characters, who often play an integral part in the story and add significantly to the gameplay experience, from players simply because they aren’t willing to pay that little bit extra? Moreover, demanding a fee for content that already exists on the disk is, frankly, greedy and extortionate.
Yet this trend shows no sign of abating. Some games are even advertising their DLC as part of their marketing campaigns, making a virtue out of their already prepared and easy to insert without any extra cost add-ons then making you pay for the privilege. Battlefield 3 even proudly proclaims that buying the game new gets you an exclusive code to play the game online in multiplayer, something gamers would be forgiven for thinking should be coming as standard.
Several developers release ‘exclusive’ or ‘gold’ editions of games six months or a year after release which include all of the previously released DLC for free, just as another kick in the teeth to gamers who bought the content (and the game itself) as soon as it became available. More frustrating still, in some cases, once purchased, DLC becomes locked to a specific console and cannot be transferred to another user, so if your console breaks, tough luck, looks like you’ll have to shell out for all of your DLC all over again.
The price of the DLC itself may vary in a few pounds depending on length, but otherwise it is dictated entirely by the publishers. As a result, there is no correlation between the amount asked for and the quality of product.
As wonderful as it is to see the world you have come to love be expanded even further, or to explore new characters and various story elements in even greater detail, much DLC does not live up to these expectations. Some consists of just a couple of extra items, which you clearly didn’t need to complete the game first time round, or are lazy, tacked on additions which would barely count as side-quests if they had originally been included in the narrative.
With reviews and quality having no impact on pricing, it is a serious issue for a gamer to distinguish between the purely money-grabbing expansions and the ones developers have created out of a genuine passion and love for the game.
Though it is easy to lay the blame on greedy developers, this isn’t always the case. Downloadable content pricing and scheduling decisions are often actually made by the publishers. Controversy even struck when Gears of War developer Epic Games, who previously gave their content out for free, were told by Microsoft to implement fees, and there are other stories of the release dates for DLC being pushed back because of disputes caused by developers refusing to accept their publisher’s pricing plans.
The problem, then, lies in the gulf between the demands of the publisher and the demands of the gamer. Publishers want DLC to be easy to create, available instantly and often, and to charge premium prices for it. Gamers want DLC to add to the overall experience of a game, prepared carefully and thoughtfully as developers come up with new ideas and respond to player feedback, not just be a way of making them pay extra for already prepared content, and be reasonably priced.
Until these two lines of thought can be reconciled, not to mention developers being allowed to have input into how their creation is developed and sold, the DLC deception will continue to leave all parties unsatisfied.
Related posts: