In recent years, the influx of DLC, Downloadable Content, has been alarming. Before, games would come fully loaded with everything on it and DLC was not even heard of. Is DLC hurting the industry or helping the industry?
Half-Life and Portal writer Erik Wolpaw has detailed how his team has been using Generative AI for research and development at Valve.
Valve has responded to New York Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit against the firm, stating it does not believe that lootboxes in its Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2 games unlawfully encourage minors to gamble, adding it was "disappointed" to see the action go ahead despite efforts to "educate" the NYAG about virtual items since "early 2023."
Hurting!!!
The worst part is that some of the worst examples of this come from some of the BEST devs, which leads me to believe that they are moving away from a creative model to a more corporate centric one. Bioware, or *cries* Blizzard.
When developers talk about DLC when a game is not released yet, that's when you know you have bovine juicing going on.
The more annoying part then the actual milking through DLC, is how the gaming media and marketing bots try and spin DLC as a good thing for the consumer, talking nonsense like expended playability for a fan.
I've been gaming for a long time, and I remember from some early PC gaming years, expansion packs or add-on packs. The closest we have gotten to those packs of yore, in regards to quality and quantity was Dragon Age :Origin. This was more market prodding to gauge a response more than anything else as is plainly evident,in my opinion, by the initial price for this pack, which was about 40+ dollars or so. Back in the day you would have gotten this content for $20, because that's how much it was worth and should be worth today; all in all, you have to remember that one dropped $60 on the initial purchase.
Not to rant on, but I think the industry is also suffering from "well if he does it, how come I can't" attitude when it comes to publishers and is having a cannibalizing effect in the long run.
ex.
p1: releases a shooter with a 5 hour campaign and a multiplayer component.
p2: releases a rpg shooter with a 20 hour campaign and a multiplayer component.
p2: sh*t, I'm giving more value than the other guy, yet his IPs sales forcast and past performance are the same as mine, what gives?/ p2 now goes back to the dev to chop said 20 hours into 10 hours leaving the remaining ten to be put into 2 5 hours campaign expansions at 12.99 each! Then asks the dev to do a Dev Diary and make sure to mention DLC.
WTF!
double oops
I support expansions, not DLC.
With expansions you get a LARGE addition to a game. Think about Brood War for Starcraft.
DLC on the other hand can be something as small as a party hat for purely cosmetic reasons.
Given the recent example of Portal 2 with $80.00 of DLC that did not affect gameplay I wish the devs would have spent their efforts elsewhere. It seems like just a way to churn more profit from 1 product.
Recently, Mortal Kombat 9 has been shown to have the "Klassic Kostumes" already on retail discs. This content requires a special code to unlock and the code will be available for purchase shortly.
I'm all for additional game content but there should be a minimum requirement for the amount it adds.
Spending 15 dollars on a cosmetic change is not something I'll be doing and hopefully others will share my sentiment.
The only way to stop this over-saturation of useless DLC is to boycott it. If it doesn't make money developers will not waste their time on it.
Boycott DLC! Support full expansions!