For those who don't know, DLC - Downloadable Content - is content you pay for to add extra to a game you have in your posession. A good example of DLC would be, say, Operation Anchorage or The Pitt for Bethesda's Fallout 3. Of course with the good come the bad, and you also have examples such as Horse Armor for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which was barely worth the money spent on the bandwidth to download it.
The idea is that DLC is supposed to add more to the game you have, say as a new form of cheap expansion pack system that PC users are used to with their videogames. However, recently it has become more apparent that companies are including so called "downloadable" content on the very disc you have bought already.
This means you are paying for a key to unlock data you have already paid for!
Now this is hardly a new practice, hell even
this topic from NeoGAF was started in December 2006 (updates regularly), however probably one of the most high profile games that use this practice was released very recently.
Resident Evil 5 is no stranger to controversy - half the internet was up in arms about its apparent racism (even after a senior university lecturer in anthropology
claimed otherwise) - but this one really took the cake, most likely due to Capcom's comments.
You see while you would expect a company such as Capcom - the most high profile member of the PC Gaming Alliance and one of the few members of the Entertainment Software Association that doesn't consider the entire thing an overpriced joke - to just raise their hands and say "Yes, its what we're doing, we need the money in this economy." Instead they gave a reason that made almost every single fan connect their palms with their faces.
Resident Evil 5 recently has a Versus Mode released as DLC. However, checking the file, some people raised a valid point that there is no possible way such a mode, which would obviously include a lot of new assets, should have a DLC of less than 2megabytes in size.
While that is bigger in size than most unlock keys, the realisation dawned that the information was already (mostly) on the disc, merely a small patch away from being within everyones grasp. As previously mentioned some games such as Viva Pinata, Lego Starwars II and Beautiful Katamari have data on the disc that can only be unlocked via a little extra cash, none of them were as big as release as RE5.
So, naturally, when probed for comment, more people than usual wanted to find out why Capcom would do this to the fanbase. Their response?
"Verses mode represents content that was created outside the scope of the original design of Resident Evil 5. This is an all new mode that required additional resources to create, not to mention the additional bandwidth costs"
What, so we are paying $5 extra to cover the cost of additional resources that were on the disc in the first place? Bandwidth costs? Heh. While it is true that SONY recently started charging developers for any bandwidth used on the Playstation Network (in order to keep the service free for the players), Microsoft does not charge for that service (it is covered in the Live fee). Even if they did, I don't see how a one-off purchase will cover never-ending bandwidth costs, can you?
I know it doesn't sound like much, but if you bought $60 worth of gas - a full tank - and then were told you can't have access to a quater of that tank before you paid an extra $5 (despite it being available for free before) then you would not be happy.
The point I am coming to is one of worrying possibility. While formally it was simply a case that small things would be unlocked (such as a new set of clothes), Capcom have now done the major-DLC-on-a-disc route, which paves the way for even larger companies to do it.
The main badboys behind it would be obvious - Activision-Blizzard and Electronic Arts to name just two - and I have a distinct feeling that Capcom have either set a very bad example on how to handle some major DLC releases, or have given us a glimpse at where we are going in the industry.
I do know they cannot go too far, as with most things, if the punters are angry they will vote with their wallets and refuse to buy. Plus, if they tried the same thing on PC, the users would have access to it long before they could even announce the release.
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