The dilemma of DLC

[Monofthedead]

I agree with the majority of this thread that DLC has gotten ridiculous. I don't however think all of it is bad.
I've bought all of the dlc for both borderlands games (I'm aware all of the dlc isn't released for the sequel yet but I bought the pass so I will be getting it) and I feel like they were completely worth it with the exception of Moxxi's Under Dome Riot for the original game. I have also bought all of the dlc for Gears 2 and 3, and Halo Reach and 4. The dlc for these two franchises is not story based except for a couple gears packs, but I also found all of this content worthwhile. I also don't mind purely aesthetic things like costumes or music or easy mode things for single player or co-op games like buying level ups with real money for tales of vesperia. All of these can be ignored.

Now on the other hand I planned on playing Asura's Wrath until I read about the ending fiasco mentioned in the OP. I will still play it eventually only I moved it way down my list for this reason. I don't believe cutting out any piece of a game is justified in any way shape or form at any time. When I bought Assassin's Creed 2 I didn't realize until I had beaten the game that 2 entire memory segments before the final segment were not included, but sold seperately. I would not have purchased the game until a GOTY edition had come out and I don't believe I should have to wait to play a game or pay a premium. I also am one of the many burned by Capcom for Street Fighter (I waited for the Super edition but then they had the arcade edition) and other on disc bs. I enjoyed Oblivion, but havn't bought Skyrim yet for obvious reasons. I'm not fond of them releasing a buggy game and patching it later (or console in wiiu's case) because I might not have enough time to download it before I have to be somewhere or I might not have internet access at the time and be stuck with the bugged version, but this I can tolerate. It's the true ending, extended ending, missing middle scene, on disc dlc, and overpriced 20 minute levels that add nothing to story gameplay or otherwise. I'd say DLC is getting a tad out of hand would be the best way to describe it, or perhaps some developers are crossing the line with it, but if done right it can be an awesome thing that helps us get more out of what we love.

TL ; DR I agree with OP/SOME DLC is good though/Love Gare's example pic/

[williamjones]

I think with this generation of games we may be facing a "lost generation" of games in the foreseeable future. As in games that were released incomplete will be unplayable in 10 years once the company that made them goes out of business. The way DRM is going it may not be possible to download a reproduction of a patch from a fan site even. Emulation for the PS3 and 360 has a LONG way to go, so it may be 20 years before these games can be played on someones computer like SNES games can be.

Hopefully somehow this wont happen, like a free patch for PS3 games section on steam is made, but what about things like the DLC that costs money? What if games from ps3 cant be played on PS5? So once your PS3 eventually bites the dust, thats it, youve lost the DLC and cant download the it again cause the channel for PS3 downloads is gone.

Will games be released in the future to include all the patches and essential DLC to finish the game? And when so, how many will be and will the DLC be free to unlock then as it wasnt now? The games industry has become too corporate externally, only the bigger wealthier companies can continue onward with the same tired franchises. The new Devil May Cry game is a sad reminder of this, if Capcom made a new game with that same looking character then its too big of a risk to be released and bomb.

[Takion Sun]

I think with this generation of games we may be facing a "lost generation" of games in the foreseeable future. As in games that were released incomplete will be unplayable in 10 years once the company that made them goes out of business. The way DRM is going it may not be possible to download a reproduction of a patch from a fan site even. Emulation for the PS3 and 360 has a LONG way to go, so it may be 20 years before these games can be played on someones computer like SNES games can be.

Hopefully somehow this wont happen, like a free patch for PS3 games section on steam is made, but what about things like the DLC that costs money? What if games from ps3 cant be played on PS5? So once your PS3 eventually bites the dust, thats it, youve lost the DLC and cant download the it again cause the channel for PS3 downloads is gone.

Will games be released in the future to include all the patches and essential DLC to finish the game? And when so, how many will be and will the DLC be free to unlock then as it wasnt now? The games industry has become too corporate externally, only the bigger wealthier companies can continue onward with the same tired franchises. The new Devil May Cry game is a sad reminder of this, if Capcom made a new game with that same looking character then its too big of a risk to be released and bomb.

Whoever fixed the title of this thread, thank you. My eye can now stop twitching.

Your first two paragraphs=my entire point exactly. Besides the fact that it's just cheap and miserly. As for Devil May Cry...I'll get into abuse of IPs later.

Really, it's getting to the point where I'm afraid to buy any new games at all for fear of this trick. This isn't marketing; this is just scamming, plain and simple, and it pisses off consumers like us to the point where we're too afraid to sink any money into new games for fear that the developers will shove their hands into our pockets and their knives into our backs, and hold the results of a hard-fought gaming campaign at ransom. Bigwigs talk about how they want the market to expand, and then choke it into submission with this bullshit, and then wonder why no one buys their games anymore. Trust between consumer and vendor in the gaming industry just doesn't exist anymore, which is why I've regressed into a retro-gaming habit, so I can revisit the days when I could rely on a developer to give me a complete experience(most of the time, anyway), and actually may be one of the contributing factors to why I started visiting this site.

The meat of the problem: if this keeps happening, more and more will become like me, a butthurt, embittered, cynical consumer who comes to expect the worst from a company. For example, I played a demo of Dragon's Dogma recently, and I really liked it, but again, I'm too afraid to risk buying it because all trust I had in the developer, Capcom, has evaporated from repeated abuse. For another example, let's consider the most recent Prince of Persia: it, too, had an end-game "episode pack" that was around 5 dollars, and it made the hard work seem inconsequential, and made me think Ubisoft was cheating me as well. If this starts to spread, and consumer relations fall apart on a large scale, it could very well lead to another Video Game Crash, and we certainly don't want that to happen.

[Sioux]

Let's just call a spade a spade here and say exactly what DLC is, was, and always had been but we were just too blinded by marketing/PR jargon to face it: a repackaged and rebadged "Feed The Machine" mentality straight from the arcade days. Much of the companies that sank or swam on that mentality are still alive today, and strictly because they eventually figured out how to go back to their own vomit by repackaging it and foisting it on you all over again as their chief business model while eliminating the arcade middle man all together. And in case you haven't noticed, the DLC/"Feed The Machine" mentality also fuels the nostalgia/HD remake and the "port to PSN/Xbox store" cottage industries.

I fail to see the point (other that making gobs of cash all over again while also insulting your intelligence) to re-package an HD compilation of Mortal Kombat 1, 2, and 3/UMK3 which are based on the last ROM revision for the arcades. Meaning they'll still have the broken combos, broken gameplay, and all the warts that were corrected or addressed. Midway may indeed be toast (good riddance) but does NetherRealm truly expect people to purchase UMK3 or MK Trilogy over and over -- next gen console after next gen console -- only to insult your intelligence by making sure its "Arcade Perfect" right down to the frustrating "I've Got ESP" computer AI that justified the "Feed The Machine" mentality of the original quarter muncher?!? Some of my friends often say, "I wish arcade perfect versions of Killer Instinct 1 and 2 were on Xbox360 and PS3!" Really?!? You wish the second or third hit from every combo attempt is met with C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER?!?! Oh, and how about those Arcade Perfect infinite combos?!? The moment you're forced to eat one of those, it'll be YOU who yanks the Ethernet cable out ...

It leads me to believe (and with accuracy that makes me wince; almost vomit) that these companies don't retain the original source-code so that they could go back and strip that crapola out of there because while the "Feed The Machine" business model worked well for arcades; it doesn't work at all for home gaming on the couch whether you call it "Downloadable Content" or "Disc-Locked-Content". Or even worse, they don't retain their source code because they see a certain franchise as unmarketable, unprofitable, and just don't care to keep it in case they might want to risk their hand at making a game in that genre again at a future time. Konami made that crystal clear with their recent admission that they lost all of their RPG making prowess after blowing up the Suikoden team as if they were nothing more than a busted format on a Clear Channel radio station. Seriously?!? You didn't keep the source code around in a vault so future developers can graze on it, especially any comments left in there by the developers to explain limitations, or why they did things a certain way?!? That's just boneheaded and infuriating beyond words. Gates and Balmer isn't that stupid. Richard Stallman isn't that stupid. Homebrew developers (for the most part) aren't that stupid ...

[Mistereyedee]

Some DLCs are good, but companies like Capcom like to restrict the living shit out of their games (just so players pay more to have access to locked content). Also, Square Enix requiring a paid DLC in order to view the ending to Final Fantasy XIII-2: just wrong.

[toshineon]

I agree wholeheartedly. It sucks, because expansions used to cost a little bit, but you got almost like a new game that just built on the game they expanded. Nowadays, you have to buy and download something that should be a free unlockable to begin with. This week, I've played my Xbox 360 one hour, while my original Xbox has gotten about 8 hours of play, and for good reason. PS2, Dreamcast, GameCube, Xbox... the last generation where games were sold to you in their entirety.

[garrendesares]

this is why i love jrpg, rarly have that problem. heck, even ar tonelico has an extra bit for a cosmopshere but thats not necesary to complete the game, unlocks extra costumes but thats all really. thats what dlc should be.

[Will98]

I've had no problems with dlc stuff... probably because the games I buy have been out for a decade and already have every expansion released and bundled.

Another reason why I don't have a problem with dlc, is because I wait for the game to become goty or I wait for Steam to have it on sale. Who can say no to oblivion goty with all expansions for $7.50?

[Takion Sun]

Woo, been a bit. Hope this isn't thread-necro or something, but I finished a game today and it made me think back to this.

Been reading back over this thread and I have to say:

Some DLCs are good, but companies like Capcom like to restrict the living shit out of their games (just so players pay more to have access to locked content). Also, Square Enix requiring a paid DLC in order to view the ending to Final Fantasy XIII-2: just wrong.

This reply is my favorite so far. I know I just went off on two paragraph-long rants, but I don't mean to imply ALL DLC is bad. In fact, I encountered some good DLC today, courtesy of Konami in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. For pre-ordering, you get a code that grants you access to two pieces of DLC: a Gray Fox skin, which is awesome, and the Fox Blade, hands down the best weapon in the game. This needs to be the standard: reward long-time fans with cool prizes and a new way to enjoy the game, and the people who don't go for it, well, they can still thoroughly enjoy the main game proper without it. DLC should take a finished product and EXPAND on it, and Konami is one of the few companies that still understands this.

[shubiduba]

I know there are some good arguments about DLC's positive side, but I'm still against it. It's radical, but I simply think it's wrong to sell the game twice. If we're going this way, might as well just get some very cheap demos from the stores (because this is what some games are nowadays), and purchase the rest of it online. As for small things that can count as add-ons, such as maps, costumes, etc, if they could be put in the game, then they should've already been there from the beggining.

I also disagree with Metal Gear's DLC. I think this kind of thing will only favour a small amount of gamers, while others will never have access to this kind of thing. Anyone who was a little short on cash, or wanted to read some reviews before purchasing, gets screwed in the end. This could also make people rush to buy a game that isn't so good...

DLC is simply the kind of stuff that can't be used by companies because sooner or later it gets abusive. And, right now, it's already gotten. But, then again, I said I'm a bit radical.

[treos]

this reminds me that theres some on-disc dlc in the game darksiders 2.. or whatever its called (i forgot the title but its the one where you play as Death, the rider of apocalypse).

i already beat the game so theres not much reason for me to keep on playing but as far as dlc goes, i was royally ticked off when partway through the game you get a invitation to the games arena known as the cauldron but when you check the map to access it off and on through the rest of the game guess what, it turns out to be locked on-disc dlc. i was literally going WTF?! i paid $60 for this game and now i'm expected to pay even MORE for something thats already in the game?

screw that, thats 1 way to make me instantly stop playing any game due to how idiotic it is. now if its not that particular type of dlc then i'm fine with it as typically you already have the entire vanilla game to play through with no problem but on-disc dlc like that is wrong. partly the same reason i never got the entire game of FFIV: the later years as that game was just a bad design with it being chopped up into multiple downloads, each of which having to be bought separately, and the reason i outright refuse to even try sonic 4 to this day of course that games reason is mainly because its like 60%+ rehash.

i buy any game (which is increasingly rare these days) and i expect the entire game to be there when i pop it in to play, not have to pay extra for what i just paid for in the first place.

edit: ...darn, forgot what i was going to add here :/ hate when that happens