Video Game DLC packs = Robbery

[sfc415]

http://www.g4tv.com/thefe...hes-available-at-launch/


The launch DLC for Mass Effect 3 has been revealed. "From Ashes" will be available on ME 3release day, March 6, for all platforms. The word of the DLC's name andcontent originally leaked on Xbox Live's marketplace, where it wasbriefly available for sale for 800 Microsoft points, and carried thefollowing description:

"Unearth lost secrets from the past and recruit the Prothean squad member in Mass Effect 3: From Ashes."

So a new mission and a new henchman for 800 Microsoft points. http://

The DLC was confirmed on Bioware's message boards by Michael Gamble, who posted:

"We're happy to confirm that Mass Effect3: From Ashes DLC will be available at launch for all platforms. Forthose of you who have purchased the N7 Collector's Edition (includingthe PC Digital Deluxe Edition), you will get this content at no extracharge. We'll have a lot more details for you later this week! StayTuned!"
Anyone else find this ridiculous? Adding content to a game after a few months seems logical; the companies might add story lines that fill in plot holes or create bridges to a sequel. But on the first damn day

What a ridiculous hustle. Release an unfinished game, and then charge an extra $10 to play it in its entirety

. As if these games didn't cost enough already. It's basically forcing everyone who didn't buy the collector's edition to drop extra $, which ends up making the final price the same as the collector's edition  but without everything else

It's nowhere as near as bad as Call of Duty DLCs though. 3 extra maps every few months for what, $15? 

 

[deleted]

Don't buy it.

The End.

 

[boredone1]

Pretty much. All the features that they could easily put on the disc for free they want to make you pay for. Most of it isn't essential, but I would still like to have if I'm paying $60 for a game or some stupid price for a deluxe edition. (i dont buy those) A company is pretty much telling me that their game is incomplete. Its the big business hustle.  Its #!$*$@+@. *shrug*

 

[livemyreality]

I don't think it's worth the money. I mean, I play MW3 and the price for the DLC packs are a straight ripoff.

 

[sfc415]

Originally Posted by PLVN

Don't buy it.

The End.

Right, that would mean no one should buy any game anymore, since pretty much every single major game is doing this nonsense nowadays. Thanks for the input <3

 

[sfc415]

Originally Posted by BoredONE1

Pretty much. All the features that they could easily put on the disc for free they want to make you pay for. Most of it isn't essential, but I would still like to have if I'm paying $60 for a game or some stupid price for a deluxe edition. (i dont buy those) A company is pretty much telling me that their game is incomplete. Its the big business hustle.  Its #!$*$@+@. *shrug*

I would understand if this particular DLC was just about extra costumes, weapons, etc (which I couldn't care less about). I don't know if you've played this series or not, but the DLC being released for ME3 is an important part of the series' storyline and background. Punishing people who didn't buy the collector's edition is just ridiculous.

You're right, the extra @#$% on the deluxe edition (which costs $10 more) isn't essential, but since I'm paying an extra $10 to play the entire game anyways, now I feel ripped off by not getting all the extras as well.

 

[mister916]

I bought purchased 1 DLC. Never again...

 

[Bend_The_Knee]

i bought 1 DLC ever, it was for warhawk, damn well worth it

 

[sfc415]

What's just as bad IMO are one use only online passes being put in games nowadays. Now you're basically forced to buy brand new games, since paying for another online pass brings up the used price to retail value, and stores buy back your games for $10 less now

 

[deleted]

I meant don't buy the DLC Mr. Poor Reading Comprehension.

 

[kidufc]

Originally Posted by SFC415

What's just as bad IMO are one use only online passes being put in games nowadays. Now you're basically forced to buy brand new games, since paying for another online pass brings up the used price to retail value, and stores buy back your games for $10 less now

Notice this too.. I was like wth?

 

[airphilippines]

The whole pre-order bonus is garbage as well.

 

[yngsimba.sneakershoebox]

 

[sfc415]

Originally Posted by PLVN

I meant don't buy the DLC Mr. Poor Reading Comprehension.

Maybe YOU should read the original post. The DLC is part of the storyline which is being left out for whoever didn't pay the extra $. Saying "don't buy it" is an idiotic response, because a) you could have easily been referring to the game OR the DLC since all you said was "IT", and b) since many people (including me) have already paid for the regular, incomplete copy of the game. Feel free to add more lame responses instead of contributing to the thread

 

[periwinkle]

I'd rather wait a while for them to come out with a version that comes with all the dlc, even then I'll wait for that to go on sale. Having a Steam backlog is kind of a blessing.

 

[onemandeep]

irs an obvious plot.. either fall or dont though

 

[an dee 51o]

For real. Tell me why it's gonna cost me like $80 to have all the UFC characters? :rollseyes

 

[sfc415]

Originally Posted by an dee 51o

For real. Tell me why it's gonna cost me like $80 to have all the UFC characters? :rollseyes

I know right? Some dude in a different forum said "it costs developers alot of time and money to develop those extra fighters." Yet PS1 and PS2 fighting games had every single fighter included within the game

You can't even beat the game to unlock new dudes, new maps, etc (which is the way it was throughout most of gaming history). You now have to pay for them in DLCs

 

[megatron]

cool first post on your back up

 

[infamouserror]

[h1]The Right Way to Lie to Gamers[/h1]
By: Brendan Sinclair, GameSpot - Posted on Feb 21, 2012

Publishers habitually pull the wool over customers' eyes in marketing their games, but they can only do it with our cooperation.

As I was writing up a story on Prototype 2's Blackwatch Collectors Edition last week, it struck me what an awful package Activision had put together "for the fans." The $80 premium bundle includes the game (along with the Radnet downloadable content all preorders will receive), a soundtrack CD, an art book, a digital comic, the first paid DLC pack (when it's released), and a 20-percent-off voucher for the Prototype Merchandise Store.

So for an extra $20 beyond the standard price of the game, the fans Activision touts so highly will receive a CD and book of the sort Atlus often gives away for free with its games, a comic book that serves as little more than a commercial for the game they've already purchased, access to a DLC pack that won't come until a month later (keeping them from feeding their copy into the used game mill), and a coupon that will let them spend even more money on Prototype-branded stuff. It's like "for the fans" has an unspoken "Because we can gouge them for more money" right after it.

Don't the fans deserve something a little more inspired than an art book and soundtrack CD?

Given the steaming piles of publisher propaganda I sift through on a daily basis, it took me a little time to figure out why this PR in particular irked me so much. Eventually, I found an explanation already exists in a concept commonly used when talking about games.

"Suspension of disbelief" is an important concept for many games. It's what makes them work, even if they don't always make sense. As an audience, there are things we must ignore in order to get wrapped up in some game experiences.

We must accept that Mario has multiple lives and can fall into a pit of lava only to magically reappear a few feet away in perfect health. That Greg Jennings can outrun an entire team of NFL players for 99 yards on a broken leg. That the jovial Nathan Drake has killed more people than your average epidemic. That a phoenix down will resurrect anybody in any situation, so long as you didn't die in a CG-rendered cutscene. That the characters in Heavy Rain are intelligent enough to not only blink but also breathe and feed themselves. All of these things are clearly absurd, but if we can somehow ignore them while we play, there is enjoyment to be found in all of those games.

Interestingly, this doesn't stop when we put the controller down. Our willing suspension of disbelief is essential not just for interacting with the games themselves, but also for the industry's marketing and hype cycle.

In order to get excited about games, we need to believe the publishers when they tell us this year's lineup is their best ever. That Mass Effect's multiplayer mode and transition from role-playing game to shooter happened for creative reasons instead of financial ones. That Dead Rising 2: Off the Record was a clever recontextualization and not a quick-and-dirty double dip. That there's a good reason to bring back X-COM and Syndicate as first-person shooters. That Madden 12 fixes everything that was wrong with Madden 11 and is itself perfect (at least until Madden 13 comes out to fix all that's broken in Madden 12).

This is a little heavy on examples pulled from EA games, but at least their games have been good enough to support our suspension of disbelief.

Notice how there's no shortage of people out there who consider those games I just mentioned among the best in their genre (Syndicate and X-COM aside, because the masses haven't played them yet). There's a social contract, a gentlemen's agreement between gamers and publishers, that states roughly that the better we feel your games are, the more we'll suspend disbelief and preorder collector's bundles and talk about the game on message boards, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth.

As gamers, we've proven more than willing to hold up our end of the bargain. We get cautiously optimistic whenever Sega says it's taking Sonic back to his roots. We get excited for Capcom's latest fighting game, even though it will likely feel stripped down at launch and rendered obsolete by a super-duper version with a few more characters within a year's time. We buy systems at launch, fully knowing that often means hardware failures, pitiful software lineups, and an inevitable redesign or price drop once the kinks have been worked out. We preorder games that are being shipped by the millions on the off chance that somehow they well sell out (or to avoid a bizarre guilt trip from a GameStop employee).

Clearly, we're pretty good at suspending disbelief. The publishers generally do a pretty good job holding up their end of the bargain as well. We rarely see a terrible game hyped to high heaven these days (see: Daikatana, Atari 2600 Pac-Man), and publisher hype is usually restrained to sentiments that it's possible some sane person somewhere would hold.

But in the case of Prototype 2, Activision crossed the line (subjective though it may be). The publisher is saying the Blackwatch edition of the game was made "for the fans," and while fans may enjoy what comes in the package, it's difficult to think the package is ultimately worth the extra money being charged. It's still more galling when you notice the publisher pads out the list of advertised goodies with the DLC all Prototype 2 preorders receive and a coupon with the only purpose of giving fans incentive to spend still more money on the game.

The curious thing about this social contract is that I take offense to it being breached. I apparently don't mind being lied to, so long as it's done "the right way." When publishers push the marketing hype beyond the realm of the plausible, I get riled up because they aren't treating me with the basic respect to which a customer is entitled. So go ahead and keep lying to us, publishers. But at least have the decency to pretend that there would be consequences if we caught you doing it.

 

[D Fly]

Mass Effect series the only games I will buy DLC for cause it's usually worth it. But otherwise...it can be a ripoff.

 

[2g00d4u]

This is why I dont buy certain genres of PC games... 

or certain games I mean...

 

[xtapolapacetl]

I've just seen that there are like 10 extra characters for the PS Vita version of Street Fighter X Tekken.

@ knowing that these will be DLC or in some Ultimate version for the 360 and PS3 in advance before the game is even released.

 

[SHERLOCK87]

That elite thing for MW3 is bogus, asking for $50 on top of the $60 we already paid

 

[blakep267]

It would be bogus if they forced you to buy it. Nobody is forcing anything. Most DLC isnt relevant at all to the actual game. You can have a perfectly fun time playing it without DLCOnly people who have issues with everything being perfectly complete worry about buying DLC. Plus its only about 10 bucks, so if you can buy a $60 game and not shell out $10, well then sucks for you. This is like somebody complaining that 3D cost 3 extra dollars. Well then dont see it in 3D