As you may have noticed, during the past few months we’ve not shared any stories regarding DLCs (unless of course we’re talking about free extra content). You see, we believe this is the cancer of gaming, which is why we took the decision to stop covering such stories. Unfortunately, however, DLC and Extra Content are not going anywhere as companies like EA make A LOT of money by selling them.
According to Electronic Arts’ latest financial stats, the company earned $195 million by selling extra content for its various games in Q2 2016. During that same period, the company earned $89 million by selling full games digitally. Yeap, you read that right. EA has earned more than 2X more money from Extra Content than from full-length digital games.
Our biggest fear here is that the aforementioned stats may force EA – and other publishers – to cut content from their games on purpose. Not that this is not happening as we speak, but things could get worse. Not only that, but there is a high chance we kiss modding tools goodbye (again, not that this is something that’s not happening today as DICE did not provide mod tools for Battlefield 3/4, but still).
What worries us is the fact that the sales from Extra Content/DLCs are constantly growing. After all, that particular category saw the biggest year-over-year growth (27%).
Naturally, this number also includes extra content sold for free-to-play titles, as well as Season Passes(correction: Season Passes fall under the “Subscriptions, Advertising, and Other” category).
And from an economical point of view, EA is doing the right thing. And since this category is so profitable – and it’s still growing – EA (and other publishers) should be nuts to ignore it.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Lovely. Will probably have to wait for the GOTY or Complete or Ultimate or Definitive edition before I can play any of their games.
“Will probably have to wait for the GOTY or Complete or Ultimate or Definitive edition before I can play any of their games” or any other company games… people hurt themselves when they pre-order or buy games day one… we just encourage this greedy moDerfuckers who reward us with all kind of nonsense bulls**t
“before I can play any of their games”, I’d say “before I can pay for any of their games”
And they wonder why game sales are down or why people pirate games. Instead of lowering the prices and making games more affordable for a lot more people, EA and other big publishers have stealthily doubled the price of AAA games by selling half of it as the base game and half of it as DLCs and Season Passes.
And they think that DLCs is dying.
this is sad that ldc should be included in the game at launch and then an expansion later.i dont buy dlc mostly.extra map that free is later?extra skins?dlc is stuff they already have planed but wont put it in the game at launch like zombie mode for cod.they fans will buy it.tho and.
Because you CUT OUT on purpose most of the main content and leave us with skeleton game!My money is staying right here in my wallet EA
Go FUKC YOURSELF!
Same. I wanted to get BF4 and Battlefront but i simply refuse to do so. I will however once i can buy everything for 30-60$. Yes everything. Every DLC and expansion.
Lets face it, games now days are just the bread and the DLC content is the filling (meat). I refuse to pay 60 at launch for a hallow game. Gamers sadly are too stupid to wake up. All my friends got the BF3 and 4 season passes for like 120 $. They ate that sh*t and loved it. Crazy i know.
Excluding day one dlc how is dlc not just additional content? You think they are taking it off the main game but they are just making additional overprived content to make up for increased development costs. DLC isn’t anything new, microtransactions and day one sh*t are. Still, this is very bad news.
The problem with EA is the sheer abuse.
Additional content? Let’s make a dozen of them;
Microtransactions? Let’s put it everywhere, including full price releases;
F2P? Let’s make it absolutely impossible to play without paying money (you know defeating the whole sodding purpose);
It’s not like “they do this”, it’s the exaggeration, the diluting of franchises and studios to nothing more than money making machines aimed at the absolute lowest common denominator. It’s not like they are the only ones doing it, it’s the fact that they go full force with the c**k, the balls and possibly one of the legs.
It’s true but lets focus on that and not strictly bashing the idea of DLC. I see red when I see those images with a whole burger representing an older game and one with all it’s ingredients separated to represent a modern game. People are mad because they can buy more stuff and lifetime for a game? But yes EA isn’t doing it completely right…
I’m not against the idea of DLC per say, but the whole industry clearly don’t know how to handle it, that’s why it should be hold to scrutiny.
They go for extremes, either is not having longevity or having additional content before the main game is even out.
What about stories like Deus Ex’s Missing Link? The Director’s Cut embedded the DLC directly into the Game for a reason; It was supposed to be part of it, until someone decided “hey, it’s such a different experience to the rest of the Game, why not make it a DLC instead!”
Then there’s the small things, like say Batman’s Costume Packs. Once upon a time, such things were considered so trivial, having people actually PAY for them was a concept WAY beyond absurd. Today it’s normal. Hell, they even use them as Pre-Order “incentives.” – “Pre-Order Batman: Arkham Knight from Steam, & you’ll get Rocksteady’s version of a Batman Beyond outfit.*”
*Footnote: The Game may or may not be in a completely unplayable state upon Launch.**
**Footnote: This, & the above Footnote are written in invisible ink, so while you’ve been “technically” forewarned, you can’t actually see this, so our asses are legally covered, while you have no actual forewarning what-so-ever, so you get royally pegged, & you can’t actually even sue us for bullsh*tting you either! Though of course, just in case, we made sure you signed your rights to Class-Action Lawsuits in the EULA’s you didn’t even read, anyway. Just in case.
True story regarding the EULA’s, too. It hasn’t been contested in court yet, but obviously someone decided it’ll stick, & in Corporate America, I can really see it sticking, too.
Same deal with Skins; Quake 3 (1999) has a ridiculous amount of Avatars to choose from. Today, you’d have MAYBE half a dozen, with the rest being DLC’d Mortal Kombat-style, because why not?
They keep using the excuse of “increased development costs” for how many years now? So we keep getting increased prices on both the Boxes & the Digital Releases (which should actually be cheaper, since there’s no Physical turds to print, no Shipping charges to cover, etc.), all while here in Europe we get doubly-screwed since they’re getting EVEN MORE expensive now that more & more Publishers are abusing Currency Conversion while screaming about VAT, if they even bother to.
Then of course we’ve got EA leading the charge in attempting to make the Industry Standard for an AAA Game 70 USD instead of the 60 USD (which they only just imposed a few years ago when the X360/PS3 Generation launched I might add, because “oh, but it’s not our fault, greatly increased development costs associated with HDTVs & Console Royalties are biting us hard!” (a perfectly ridiculous excuse which doesn’t even apply to PC, I might note, but where’s our lower price, compared to the Console version? “Uh? Uh…. Porting costs!” Yep, their bullsh*t half-assed Ports which barely cost them anything, those Ports. Just like the delightful Arkham Knight Port they tried to get away with. Remember that?)), which they’re attempting to hide behind the extremely thin veil of “Digital Deluxe” Editions providing nothing but cut content & booster packs at the low-low-price of 10$ extra because….. “increased development costs”?
In the meantime, their income margins are growing year-over-year, & each half-assed piece of shit Sequel sells even more than the last one with all their over-hyping & marketing gimmicks, so please, explain to me exactly where/how they’re justified in claiming “increased development costs”?
Not to mention how much they make on the side with their Anti-Consumer practices every time they sell off Timed Exclusive Rights to either Microsoft (all while they ANNUALLY put out some PR bullsh*t about “renewed PC interest”) or Sony (thank you so much for starting THAT particular fad, Activision, because your Billion-Dollar IPs apparently weren’t making you enough money on their own to cover those “increased development costs” stemming from repeatedly licensing Quake 3’s (at the time) 10+ year old shitty outdated Engine, even at their respective Sales peaks?), or claim there’s no PC/other version coming any time soon, or is even in the works, in order to maximize their double-dipping. Remember Rise of the Tomb Raider? Remember Grand Theft Auto V? YEARS of bullsh*t. YEARS. But yeah, we should be paying their “increased development costs” after all that, right?
Don’t even get me started on Publisher-controlled Servers in Multiplayer Games, & Always-Online DRMs in Single-Player Games that stream Data directly from those Servers, meaning that once those Servers are shut down, short of a massive Fan Patch, the Game is literally dead, since you’re missing critical elements such as AIs in Single-Player, or really just the ability to connect to any sort of Hack-Free Multi-Player at all (since LAN is now officially for suckers, or something…..) all in the good name of “Anti-Piracy.” But hey, good news! You’re just in time to support those “increased development costs” by bending over once more, since the next Game in the Series just came out! What’s new? Oh, they added a new – er, oh no wait, they had to cut that, nevermind. Oh well. Next time then, except, oh, damn, they ran the IP into the ground, dismantled & shut down the Studio, fired everyone, & now it’s over….. DAMN YOU, “INCREASED DEVELOPMENT COSTS!”
@HAL9900:disqus
Please provide evidence for your claims HAL. Everyone has all these assumptions about things but rarely does anyone every have ANY EVIDENCE.
Your comments showcase a lack of understanding of the industry and business at large. You seem to think a studio and publisher work like a landscaping company.
Content gets cut prior to release this is a fact. Much of game development is like sculpting, you trim things away until you get a working and cohesive product. If development starts with high ambitions they may have to widdle things down. If developers are cutting content they are making a BAD game.
Some of that cut content comes in the form of DLC but MUCH of the DLC that comes out now is planned with the release schedule of the entire game. If you were to wait until the game was complete to release DLC your first DLC pack would be out 6-9 months after the launch. By that point your title is collecting dust and no longer carries retail relevance. That business model would not work.
Console games pricing hasn’t changed since 2006. If the price of games held pace with inflation we would likely be paying over $100 per game. DLC, Microtransactions and other add-ons give publishers the ability to maintain the $60 price point but also gather additional revenues. We are talking about very large companies who want to thrive. Simply “getting by” isn’t an option any more. Ask THQ.
“Our biggest fear here is that the aforementioned stats may force EA –
and other publishers – to cut content from their games on purpose.”
they already doing it, it’s called battlefront 😀
It’s laughable that even after paying 120 dollars, people still get half as*ed game (Hardline and Battlefront). What’s the point of these so called “AAA” games from publishers like EA?
Meanwhile a cheaper game (like 40$) from independent developers offers better gameplay and dozens of hours of gameplay and ton of features. They also don’t treat gamers like criminals. That’s why I’ve totally given up on EA, Activision and Ubisoft.
Hardline still STILL hasn’t delivered ANY of the “Super Features”
Masks – New player masks with unique gameplay benefits tied to the theme of each mask.
Gun Bench – Provides players with the ability to visually customize their weapons and track their kills per weapon.
Competitive Play – Support for competitive play through Battlefield Hardline tournaments and ladders.
Legendary Status – Provides replayability of the entire progression system.
#SteamDLCftw…nope!
DSOG understood it completely wrong.
They don´t earn 2x more money from DLCs (it even doesn´t make any sense, price of average dlc is $9,99, full digital game is $59,99 so they would need to sell 12 DLCs per game) but it´s earning from whole digital content. That means mostly free-to-play games with microtransactions.
obviously dlc prices dont drop that much and ofcourse f2p
I don’t blame EA. I blame consumers.
“voting with your wallet” clearly doesnt work.
Well, it does work. People are voting in favour.
Then it’s a rigged ballot. Where’s the outrage? The cries for justice? Damn this gamer generation. Soft padded seat dwellers the lot of us.
LOL
that’s not what a rigged ballot is. Just because you don’t like the result doesn’t mean you should cry ‘RIGGED!’ No one is being decieved, we are consumers in the internet age. If someone wants to waste their money on microtransactions, sorry, but you’re going to have to learn to live with how it impacts games, not try to change their life.
you can pick your nose, and you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick pick your friend’s nose.
A lot of EA sheep that why
Both need each other for this model to work. I blame everyone. It’s easier that way too. A nice cosy blanket.
“You have to vote with your wallet you guys!”
“Don’t like it, don’t buy it!”
“It doesn’t affect the game!”
“Companies exist to make money!”
“For ‘X’ game is worth the DLC!”
Nice job chums!
Now i see Gamers are just idiots most of them are console ,,gamers”.
They still took a loss on Hardline.
Gamers are dumb.
Sorry, you are generalizing there, maybe there are a good quantity of players buying this DLC stuff, but not everybody. We cant even know how many are buying DLCs.
Not talking about all of them but most of them. Industry is ruled by casuals. Whether you like it or not but most of us are not really “gamers”. They have no idea how industry works or what they shouldn’t support. All they want is return home and kill some dudes in Assassin’s Creed or COD.
They get frustrated if the game kicks their but*. That’s why COD and Assassin’s Creed or FIFA/Madden are best sellers because most of us are casuals, who also support practices like DLC and don’t know what goes into making a good game or what is good for the industry.
So their “casual” just cause they play games you don’t like, that’s Insane Troll Logic if i’ve heard it.
hahaha fk you too EA
Better buy GOTY, Ultimate Editions etc., to have games with all DLC at once.
It’s the only reasonable way to buy many AAA titles these days.
Well you cant stop all the idiots buying dlc, but I kinda understand some times there is no other way :I if you wanna play full game nowadays
They live in the future too …. daaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Full game DOWNLOADS. This doesnt include physical copies of full games?
you think this is bad wait till star wars battlefront is released.they are going to make a killing off of star wars fans.
So basically the problem is the stupid gamers who buy EVERYTHING.
Too many slacktivists and hypocrites in gaming.
fiscal years or something like that maybe lol
nothing inherently wrong with DLC as it lets the developers / publishers continue developing content for their game. obviously its a risky practice if they start cutting content or not developing some stuff because theyll just release it later on down the line
This scares me. Also shows me something I often assumed which is that us vocal majority are really the minority when it comes to actual game sales. All of us that are on the internet being the keyboard warriors that we are and putting out Youtube videos to rant about microtransactions, dlc and bad pre-order business practices are such a minute fraction of the games community.
The reality is that the majority are either under 18 or just casual gamers that don’t care about all the things we argue about. They just want the games they like and more of it after release, regardless if we know it was gouged from the game or not. Your random punter isn’t going to know that or give a sh*t.
This saddens me, but its true.
The only hope is they will get too greedy and it comes crashing down.
Some games with full dlc’s and the like are over $1000, Train simulator being an example.
It’s already becoming a joke, Majority of punters out there can’t afford it.
It’s just those of us that can build $5k pc’s every year or two and we should know better and avoid this dlc crap like the plague.
Another issue I found is on Steam if you read some forums, This applies to achievement addicts.
You buy a game and complete it 100%, Then later on they release dlc and your 100% drops basically forcing you to buy the dlc if you want 100% completion rate.
It should stay at 100% no matter if you own the dlc or not, It’s BS!
Or, most of that is made from FIFA Ultimate team ?
Tons of ppls could pay a shitload of money to buy their packs.
DLC’s is a great idea and all but… Just make them free ok? Greedy bastards!
Are people blind, it clearly says digital sales meaning they did not include retail. Also did the writer missed that, conclusion seems like a bunch of assumptions based on the confusion. I also wouldn’t be assuming sh* t since this is accross all their services meaning f2p, origin mobile and console.
Right, and there’s no incentive to buy digital versions of games over retail ones when they cost exactly the same (and sometimes more in the case of GTA V), not to mention sometimes digital versions of games will actually not work at all, we saw that with the digital Xbox One version of Witcher 3.
No sense in buying digital versions of a game over a retail one when you’re not even sure the thing will actually work.
this just sucks
Bf4 is a lot better than Battlefront in terms of value
you can buy bf4 for 10$ and still 33,000 people play it on pc everyday
No wonder they don’t do Remastered Versions. Because that way they will have to pack every DLC into one pack, and that is losing money for them. Example: Mass Effect. (there is no version where all the DLCs are included. Not even ME:Trilogy Edition.)
This report as witb most gives the impression that gamers have no say in this sort of thing.
We have the ultimate sanction of not buying it, as individuals that decision still counts for something on it’s own merit.
When as little as 10% of gamers do so. The DLC has no profit at all. Then things will change.
Even so stick to these decisions regardless of what other gamers do or say. The only way to change things is not to buy the product.
I was a console gamer when console exclusives became the normal practice. My opinion is, if the only reason I have for buying a platform, is to play kidnapped games. I have no reason to buy the console ever. I will never pay a ransom to play.
That’s the longest comment I have seen in disqus. You bring out some great points, can’t really argue against them. Some companies are clearly abusing the system and dlc, that’s a big problem. DLC on itself is a great idea if you do it right. The problem here is that we dont know how much the development cost have risen. I have read they doubled with the PS2-PS3 gen, with the new gen it can’t be double but some. But have games gotten that much more expensive since 2006 for example? No. So DLC is a very good form of creating more revenue but big companies who are doing very well are still abusing dlc. What are the exact profit margins etc? We dont know. Hopefully people realize the deal with dlc and the whole industry settles down to a good point. As an example I used to pre-order but after AC3 and mainly other ubisoft fails I really dont anymore.
There’s claims that HDTVs, ergo HD Textures “doubled” Development costs because of the massive Resolution boost. Then these last few years GPU Computing power has escalated massively, yeah, but the Industry as a whole has largely just been squeezing out dregs of power from the PS3/X360 for years, & Porting that to PC with the occasional “HD Texture” Pack, so that really doesn’t explain much.
Crytek claims Crysis cost them $20M whereas Crysis 3 cost them $66M, which seems completely absurd considering how small the damn thing was, & how much they were obviously recycling from Crysis 2. Rocksteady likes to talk about how GTAV cost them “$265M” while conveniently leaving out the fact that like many others, they’re factoring Marketing costs into that, while the actual breakdown of Development/Marketing was $137M/$128M (for both the Old-Gen & the New-Gen Remaster combined, most likely). Likewise, if you actually factor both Development & Marketing, Activision’s produced the most expensive Video Game in History to date, in the form of Modern Warfare 2, which cost them a paltry $50M in Development, but $200M in Marketing.
Then we’ve got EA’s SWTOR, which all we know is “it cost $200M.” How that breaks down exactly, we’ve no idea, since they’ve apparently never specified.
Likewise with Destiny, which cost “140M.” Now sure, MMO Development IS expensive, no question there, but seriously? Meh. Granted, it no longer takes 5 guys in a Garage to develop an AAA Game, at the same time the numbers they continuously vomit out to us seem beyond absurd.
Yes, some Games actually have good DLCs; DLCs as a concept aren’t really bad, since you can do small Projects that the Expansion Pack Era would otherwise not have really permitted (though at the same time, most of them would have been Patched in for free in that Era), but when ZeniMax-Bethesda grows a pair of balls so big that they try to sell you Horse Skins for $5$ & the Internet revolts, only to end up taking it up the ass a few years later because of Consoles, what else can people do but hate the entire existence of DLCs.
It’s not always about the content itself, either. EA for example sells “Shortcut Unlock Packs” (or whatever they’re called) for Battlefield 3 & 4, which borderlines “Pay to Win” Territory. Then there’s all these Resources allocated to various Pre-Order Bonuses, some of which are sold off to specific Retailers, even.
Unfortunately the Industry is ridiculously secretive about all this, so we don’t know specific details or breakdowns of anything outside of Income Revenue reported to Stockholders by Publicly-Traded Corps. We’ve got vague details which we pick up from here & there, but by-&-large all we know is that they keep devising more & more creative ways to make money off of us, all while they make ridiculously stupid Design decisions (or they just dumb the IP down in order to make it as accessible as possible, I.E. Halo for example), resulting in IP degradation, because they collectively can’t get their heads out of their asses long enough to realize how ridiculously pathetic they are.
Here’s an interesting fun fact on this; Rise of the Tomb Raider will have over 300 Micro-Transactions; “Creative Director Noah Hughes explained on the Xbox Wire that players will be able to use “Expedition Cards” to gain various modifiers or advantages, and while those cards can be acquired with credits earned in the game, they’ll also be sold for real money.”
“We’ll have about 300 cards available at launch, and more will be added in the weeks that follow.”
Whether or not this is to cover “increased development costs” or just to funnel some extra money into their pockets doesn’t change the fact that Resources were specifically WASTED on this, when they could have been just as easily allocated to something that was at least less insulting.
The secrecy benefits them though, since it means they can make up obviously bullsh*t excuses instead of being forced to own up to anything & make proper amends (yes Arkham Knight PC, I’m looking at you & your bullsh*t “2-month full-refund” program), &/or either refuses to learn from its mistakes, opting instead to just repeatedly mash its head into a wall when it encounters resistance, or is too short-sighted to see beyond the $$$$ symbols when a competitor comes up with a “good” money-making scheme.
If they cut out too much of the content from the full game by making it DLC people may stop buying the full games. Market will correct itself and EA will find consumers buying someone else’s software.
Good for EA!
You clearly know about the subject, I have at least heard of most of those things but dont know about them in depth. About microtransactions and the deal with battlefield, I think they are fine if done the right way. In battlefield there really isn’t any OP weapons and you get the unlocks rather fast. Unlocking is also part of the game and keeps you playing for longer. How about those shortcuts? Again you dont gain much from them and if you start playing months, even years after the release you might consider the shortcut as everyone else has everything too. It’s fine especially if the shortcuts arent available immediately. Also that system requires basically no development time at all.
It may be a different story with the tomb raider but I don’t know how the card thing was a ”waste” if the cards ”can be acquired with credits earned in the game”. If it isn’t too seperate(meaning lost development time) and you dont really NEED to buy anything then it’s fine by me. If the game mechanics are built around something that is meant to be purchasable then it may be a big problem.
“Some of the cards are “humorous,” such as one that enables Big Head
Mode, while others have a more meaningful impact on gameplay: The
“Bullet Resistance” card, for instance, which confers (as you may have
already put together) bonus resistance to gunfire.”
Not exactly the worst implementation in History, especially when Diablo 3’s RMAH comes to mind (it basically simplified the entire Game to “how good are you at playing the Market”), for example, & yeah, EA/DICE at least holds off on the Shortcut Packs (so far) until later on Post-Launch, coupled with the fact that they don’t actually make up for lack of Skill, like I said, “borderline Pay to Win.”
Resource-wise the ROTT Cards are probably about the size of a DLC Pack, assuming they didn’t just outsource it to some other Studio or some anonymous nobody in China (true story, a lot of Art etc. gets outsourced these days), just to get the entire thing done in time for Launch. Anyway.
@disqus_dcshIJLulQ:disqus
Your comment is filled with many assumptions and myths.
Console game pricing has been flat since 2006, in just a few years inflation has robbed about $10 from that retail price, which is significant.
You didn’t remark on inflation, which is noted. If game pricing kept pace with inflation games would be priced over $100.
You didn’t remark on how used game retailers have forced things like Day 1 DLC, DLC and Microtransactions into the current business models. In essence GameStop made it their business model to cannibalize the sales channels of publishers and studios. To suggest that the publishers and studios shouldn’t respond is just asinine.
Game budgets are still rising. Gamer’s appetites are larger than they have ever been. Optional content is one way to hold the prices of games to $59.99.
Developers and publishers have a right (and a duty to their investors) to generate revenues from their efforts. If you don’t like those efforts feel free to be an adult about it and not purchase them.
Your comments are devoid of intellectual honesty and have no historical context. You just make wild claims of what we have to pay today and comparing it to yesteryear when game budgets were a fraction of what they are today and in general the scope of games has become much greater.
I am not suggesting that everyone needs to be happy with DLC, Microtransactions or the like. I am just suggesting it is time for people to eduate themselves about some of the economic realities that affect the pricing of games.
When exactly did Sony start the Timed Exclusivity games? As I recall MS technically started that with BioShock.
Activision started it with Call of Duty as far as I’m aware, not Sony, though Sony did pick up the tactic pretty quick themselves (first noted with Battlefield 3, 2011, personally), though they’ve never gone 30 days the way Microsoft did with CoD as far as I know (note I’m not factoring in the new Crytek Game, or Rise of the Tomb Raider, or such “long-term” exclusivity agreements into that. Microsoft was for example undoubtedly paying for years to keep Gears of War off any other Platform, I’m not factoring that in either).
Second-Hand Sales are something that’s a part of everything, not something that’s exclusive to Video Games. Most other Industries take it into stride, ours tries to vilify it & turn it into some kind of Hate Crime against Developers. It’s a thing, it’s been a thing for MILLENNIA, it’s not going to stop because “some people want it to”, & it’s not going to pass over Video Games just because Developers “feel” they’re being ripped off suddenly, after Decades of it being extremely common practice.
I’m pretty sure I still have unreturned copies of some GBA Cartridges from before I moved in a box somewhere, for example. Not to mention PS, PS2 Discs, PS3 Discs, DS Cards, etc. My god, my copy of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow was given to me by someone who’d already finished the Game several times over! I NEVER PAID FOR IT. OH MY GOD! I… I… I should write an Apology letter to Konami IMMEDIATELY. While I’m at it, am I to write letters of apology to each & every Publisher detailing EVERY Game I never actually bought for myself? Should I ask my friends, who I lost some discs/cartridges to myself to do the same? Because that’s somehow NOT “asinine”? Please.
Here’s the thing though; Beyond inflation itself, if Video Games were priced at over 100$ each, how accessible do you believe they’d be, exactly? Inflation vs. Accessibility is always a problem, & Cinemas are suffering from this exact issue even as we speak. 15-30$ for a Movie Ticket, & then another 7-10$ for Popcorn & Generic Cola?
Here’s another thing; You forget that before 2006 we went all the way from 30$ to 50$ in the span of a handful of years, even before they justified the 60$ jump with “HD Texture costs & New-Gen Console Royalties.” Besides, other Industries know how to pace themselves; Hollywood actually reschedules things if there’s major conflicts between two Movies “premiering” on the same date, for example. The Video Game Industry lobs everything into a handful of weeks every Fall & expects you to buy it all, because “why not.”
Yes, Video Game Publishing is a Business. No, it doesn’t give them an excuse to treat us like walking, talking wallets with no IQ to speak of. It doesn’t give them the right to lie right to our face about a product just to get our money BEFORE we can realize they royally screwed us because we were too gullible to see it (seriously, just Google some of the utter bullshit EA & DICE were vomiting out in regards to Battlefield 3 in the months preceding Launch, just one example in the endlessly-growing sea of bullsh*t they vomit at us).
At least when Hollywood makes something as monumentally stupid as a Fantastic Four reboot, it’s because they want to keep the IP Rights. When 2K/Irrational greenlit the ridiculous story of Bioshock Infinite under the Bioshock label, they did so with the full knowledge that it’s got absolutely nothing at all to do with Bioshock itself, “but hey, it’s ok, we can always hide behind the age-old excuse that “launching a new Video Game IP is hard…. or something.”
See, here’s the difference: The Music Industry uses entrapment-based contracts to force naive, newly-discovered Artists into Label deals, from which the Artists themselves make very little money (you can look this up for yourself, instead of taking my word if you wish, 95% of Artists make next-to-nothing off Album Sales, making most of their income from Live Concerts, etc.). The Movie Industry grinds everything they make into the ground with endless Sequels (ala-Pirates of the Caribbean, unfortunately), while the Video Game Industry grinds every IP they can into the ground by defiling it, willingly, & knowingly. Don’t you think that perhaps there’s some weird, f*cked up reason behind 10+ year old CS Games STILL being ridiculously popular, even after all this time, maybe, compared to the countless other FPSs that have come & gone over the years, leaving nothing but a sh*tstain on their IP?
Sure, neither Call of Duty nor Battlefield would have netted Activision/EA as much money as they have now if they’d just left well enough alone (Call of Duty 4, & the true Battlefield 2 Sequel that BF3 was marketed as, which it most certainly was not), but on the other hand, faith & respect in both Publishers & the respective Development Studios behind both IPs would be considerably higher today. Instead, CoD is a joke, & DICE is ridiculed every time they showcase something about their upcoming “Battlefront” Game (in quotations because it barely even qualifies as that, compared to its predecessors).
The results of this can be see on a far wider scale with World of Warcraft, for example. The moment it exploded into popularity, things suddenly started to shift. At first they still followed the plan they’d established, Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, but then – “OH MY GOD, 12 MILLION SUBS!” Well now, we can’t possibly let go of that, can we now. So, what’s the best thing to do? Oh, I know…. LET’S MAKE WOW MORE ACCESSIBLE, BECAUSE THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT OUR SEASONED PLAYERBASE WANTS! End-result? They’ve lost 50% of their Subs, dropping from 10M to 5M in the last year alone. Good job. Unfortunately these people are crammed so far into their delusions, they can’t even accept that they’re doing something wrong (much like the Pirates of the Caribbean writers, for example) – except that in this case, it’s not just a small faction of people trying to milk an IP to death, it’s the entire Industry that thinks we WANT what they’re doing, that we’re willing to put up with it while they dumb everything down even further, & further, & further.
Furthermore, neither the Music nor the Movie Industry (not that I support either’s bullsh*t), unlike ours has ever gone on PUBLIC record discussing how to turn a 60$ package into a 200$ package while adding nothing more than MINIMAL VALUE to it. You don’t believe me? I’m not asking you to. Again, just google it. Yes, I’m being serious.
Have Development Budgets increased exponentially these last few years? Sure, let’s say they have. Has the Video Game Market as a whole EXPLODED over the last few years? YES, IT BLOODY WELL HAS. Every other Entertainment Industry in the world is content charging relatively sane prices (by comparison) for their products, & looking at either Chart Positioning, Box Office Income, or just general profits made in order to deem a product as “a financial success” or “a financial failure” even without abusing whatever it is the Video Game Industry uses to get away with charging Australians 3-4 times “normal” prices because (another fact, feel free to Google this one too).
At least when a Critic praises the Fantastic Four Reboot, you can tell he’s either insane, or paid off, done. When CD Project Red of all people tries to justify visual downgrades to Witcher 3 using bullsh*t excuses however, that’s just insulting.
Do I really even need to detail the various other methods the Video Game Industry uses to shoot itself in the foot, too? DRM’d games, for example? A DVD is always going to be a DVD, for example, but when your Game doesn’t work on Windows 10 because the DRM is being blocked by Microsoft, or the DRM Server’s been shut down, that’s Publishers shooting their own long-term profits in the foot, not the work of Second-Hand Sales, or some Satanic Ritual. Likewise with other Anti-Consumer “Anti-Piracy” practices.
No, a person is not “insane” or “paid-off” just cause they like a movie that you do not, that’s ridiculous.
Now how does this compare with a company that doesn’t gouge it’s users?
Do other companies sell more copies of their full game because users know that other companies aren’t gouging them. You know like are other companies selling 3 times as many full games compared to EA, which would make the whole DLC bullshit invalid
There’s nothing wrong with DLC if it’s done right. Like most things. Too bad this is just an invitation for EA to continue to gimp the experience and cash in on drip feeding it back to the gamers.
Almost like they studied drug dealer dynamics and we’re all now just virtual junkies. Oh well. Virtual….
Yet another article filled with DLC hate comment and yet no one responded intelligently to my remarks. Go back to school learn some economics and business. Then you may have a qualified opinion.
Well, as long as there are stupid parents who give away money to their kids, kids will never understand the value of money and how not to be stupid consumers in life at all.