Friday, September 04, 2009

7 Deadly Sins of Gaming - Sin 4

Sin 4: DLMFC

I'm going to kind of bite the hand that feeds me here, but I HATE DLMFC.

DLC stands for downloadable content.

The M stands for the word 'mother' and the F stands for something you shouldn't theoretically do with your mother.

I'd hope.

DLC is the hip new thing in the world of gaming. Basically, they sell you most of a game for full price and then charge you EXTRA money to get the rest of the game.

I realize that sounds entirely insane.

That's because it is entirely insane.

Yes, yes. You can play the game without buying the DLC. No one is forcing you to buy the DLC. No one has a gun to your head saying "You're gonna buy some DLC."

Actually, I'm sure if they could figure out how to do that, they would.

And then they'd charge you for the service.

I wouldn't mind so much if the original game were cheaper and then you could opt to purchase DLC to bring you to a full price point. If there's twenty dollars worth of DLC, the game should be twenty dollars cheaper.

Can you imagine buying a car only to find out the seat and headlights were optional?

Sure, if it's months or even years later AND they're providing a new experience and not just a slight addendum to the game you already purchased, then I can accept that.

Grudgingly, but still.

But games today have DLC on day 1. Game hits stores and they're already asking you to spend another twenty bucks.

It took one creative/sadistic motherf&%@er to come up with that shit.

I know that they're just trying to find ways to make more money. Given the high level of competition in the video game market, game companies have to find a way to pad the bottom line.

And they do have to struggle with a sort of glass ceiling when it comes to game pricing.

Unfortunately, the reason that glass ceiling exists is that they're already charging the highest amount any reasonable or non-reasonable person might spend on a single game.

Now, they smash your head on that glass ceiling and then charge you more money to clean up the mess.

What the hell is that all about?

If you're already charging an arbitrarily chosen maximum price for a game, it is downright ludicrous to THEN charge more money for the rest of the product.

Even if you can play the game without the DLC, they're basically telling you that you need to spend more money to have a complete game.

Yeah, completely optional stuff like gold horse armor you can go without, but they're still slapping you in the face saying you have an incomplete copy.

Am I the only person on the planet who thinks this is some seriously f&%@ed up shit?

Make a game. Put game on disc. Put ENTIRE game on disc. Look around for some more stuff to put on disc. Put disc in case and sell for one price.

Is that so FREAKING HARD?!

I'm not asking you to make games cheaper.

By the way... Make games cheaper, already.

All I'm asking is that when I buy a game, I get the entire game. I don't want to buy cards or points or tokens or whatever other freaking bullshit you're making up right now.

Give me the game, the extra characters, and the new hat.

For no extra money.

None.

None at all.

I shouldn't even need a wifi connection for my console unless I feel like having a twelve year old gangsta wannabe question my sexuality because I just beat him.

That's what wifi was intended for.

Now, if you want to give me free stuff for my game, that's cool. I'm totally cool with that.

Hey, a free hat. Sweet.

But telling me I just bought a game, a game that has an opportunity to wear a hat, a game with hat wearing potential, and then asking me to pay for the hat?

So not cool.

What happened, man? You guys used to be cool.

Now, it's all about the hat money.

You sicken me.

13 Comments:

At 9:35 PM, Blogger Sword said...

Whats next they're gonna charge youf or bugs, glitches, or controller fixes they should've worked out in development. I would'nt be suprised if they already did to be honest, but I don't have wifi/internet services on my consoles so I would'nt really know.

That thing on Oblivion, hmm is it me or does that just sound like Legit RMTing? Hell to be honest there is probably already a bunch of 3rd party sites that allow you to hack it anyways, so why pay out the ass for it.

Anyways /rant off

 
At 10:03 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

I assume your not a fan of the current micro... nah, nano-expansions that are ACP and AMK?

 
At 10:47 PM, Blogger Seiken said...

One of the burnout games for 360 requires you to pay to activate online multiplayer, new cars, different maps, and a ton of other shit. I realize they're large additions (except the cars), but they charge a lot for that shit and it adds up quick. I started out buying a game that was a couple years old and saw that I needed to pay about the cost of a brand new game plus the initial cost to experience about what a game should have in the first place...

 
At 6:39 AM, Blogger Taeraresh said...

Completely agreed about the DLC. For stuff like special cars in a racing game, but at least give us the full plot for our $60. This is especially bad in Fallout 3, where the ending is DLC.

 
At 8:27 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

DLC annoys me. It's great to have the downloadable games, if you're getting bored and don't want to head to the store you can download a new game in no time.

It wouldn't be so bad but now games are taking out what used to be standard and then putting it up for DLC as you say - day 1. Alot of games are making you pay for multiplayer modes now.

Unfortunately it will stay around as long as idiots keep paying for it.

@Sword. Oblivion already does that. Play the ps3 limited edition version and become a vampire. You basically get screwed and the only way to fix it is to buy the original, load your game on it, fix it then save and go back to the other version. Try and contact Sony about it or Bethesda and all they say is it's not their problem.

 
At 11:38 AM, Blogger Sword said...

Heh, that sucks Pimp. It's sad to say, but I think we are having another Atari 2600 era where the video game market literally came on the brink of destruction due to crap like this.

In all retrospect it's false advertising to sell an unfinished product for full price, and forcing players to anty up an additional amount to complete the game.

Then you have to consider what about the players who don't have internet access on they're consoles like myself. What good is it going to do me if I buy Fallout 3, beat it, then get screwed out of the ending like Taer mentioned.

I realize that a grand majority of us have internet access these days, but not all of us have the money for additional addons like a wifi dongle, XBox live, or extra Hard drives when others are overflowing with DLC, ontop of the additonal $50+ for the game.

 
At 3:42 PM, Blogger Meeka said...

@ John
I think Dave answered that question in his post.
"Sure, if it's months or even years later AND they're providing a new experience and not just a slight addendum to the game you already purchased, then I can accept that."
Then again, I'm not sure these really provide a new experience given how fast and easy they are to complete. But I do so love that shiny helmet...

 
At 10:41 PM, Blogger Kenny said...

I thought Fallout 3 was a full game, and the DLC for it was just added side quests?

 
At 1:15 AM, Blogger Darling said...

you know you all want that damn sexy horse armour

 
At 11:20 AM, Blogger Mil'bereth said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

 
At 2:25 PM, Blogger Vorinia said...

So... pretty much everyone is glossing over the fact that SE made up some crappy "expansions" to the game, which basically amounted to charging us RL cash for in-game armor.

Plus, you only get the Mog Satchel if you buy the Security Token for cash, to cover up the holes in the crappy security.

Neither of which, imo, change anything about the game.

 
At 3:00 AM, Blogger Costin Moroianu said...

That is pretty annoying, what can be more annoying are steam games.

 
At 12:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You see... Square Enix is smart. They have some of their new games on the Wii Ware but they charge a very low price for it. They usually charge like $8 to $10 for the basic game where you don't need to buy any extra content to beat. Then they can charge anywhere from $1 to $10 for any extra content each.

So at least that low price of the game draws the players in to buy it since it's really, really cheap.

 

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