Damaging Legitimate Consumers with Disc Locked Content

DLC, it’s a term so integrated into gaming now it’s hard to see a future without it. The ability to download an additional missions, new costumes, Extra Characters and New maps has been one of the highlights of this generation. Unfortunately though what’s so great about DLC has become corrupted by corporate greed.

DLC should be intended to extend the life of a game long after its release. Developers spend additional months creating new content and charge a minimal amount. Everybody wins, a games’ community gets stronger, gamers get more life out of a game and developers pocket a little extra money.

I don’t like what it’s become and what it could snowball into later on. Developers are heading down a dark path where we start seeing significant game elements held back, specifically to make more money. I get that they’re a business and all that but as a gamer I can’t help but worry about where this is all leading.

Take Street Fighter X Tekken. A lot has been said about Capcom locking content on the disc you buy. This is nothing new for them; Resident Evil 5 and Marvel vs Capcom did the same thing. What’s locked for SFxT is 12 new characters and a whole range of costumes. These 12 characters are the equivalent to around 25% of the current Roster.

Essentially a quarter of the game is ready now but is locked until later this year and will cost quite a bit of money to unlock.

First off let me just clarify something about ownership of a game. Many people don’t get this but when you buy a game at retail you only own the disc. You do not own the content on that disc. You can take that disc and play it on the system the developers want you to play it on, but with regards to the actual content you own nothing.

You do not own the Characters, Stages, Music, Costumes, Code, etc. So the Argument that you have paid for it already is wrong, you’ve got what you paid for, a disc you can play in your console, nothing more. Think of it this way, when you buy a 360 copy of a game are you entitled to the PS3 copy for free? Why not you own the game right, all that content belongs to you?

It’s why I dread a download only future as you won’t actually own anything for your money, but that’s a different argument altogether. The point is that the developer owns the rights to the content and can do whatever it wants with it.

So Legally there is nothing wrong in what Capcom are doing. Their argument is that they intend to revitalise the franchise later in the year. They deem these 12 characters as additional content and want you to pay for them. Instead of downloading them, they are there waiting for you to unlock them with a 104KB bit of code you pay for later.

Saves the consumer downloading them, means people who don’t pay for the DLC can play with people who do and minimises server rental costs (someone has to pay for the costs of housing data on the marketplace, doubt its Microsoft)

So there are benefits of handing DLC this way, the problem lies in the fact that content is available NOW and is being WITHHELD. Also the scale and significance of that content is getting a bit high, 20 to 25% of the game held back.

If you do wish to hold some content back and charge us extra for it that is fine, but people are impatient. They aren’t happy waiting for content available now, especially when there is no reason for it to remain locked. Charge for a part of the game sure, but don’t make us wait. People have already hacked SFxT and gained access to the additional characters

And try to keep the “Extra” amount small. In some ways Mass Effect 3 got this right. You expect to get more in a collector’s edition; a single bonus mission available for those that pay extra through the collector’s edition or through DLC is fine. 1 mission isn’t significant.

On the other hand Mass Effect 3 has very strong hints that the ending is not what it seems and that you will have to pay extra to get the real ending. This is wrong. Deliberately holding back the ending of a beloved trilogy to sell later on is really pushing the boundaries of morality.

Note: For those that don’t know some folks at Reddit discovered hidden dialogue on the disc which points to a different ending. The current ending does hint at a real ending, I’ll be detailing my thoughts on that later (yes I do think the Indoctrination theory is real).

So where am I going with this. Well put it this way. If something as big and significant as the ending of a trilogy or 25% of the character roster in a fighting game can be withheld until later, what else can?

How long before developers start charging for every character in the roster, plus additional charge for the costumes. Charges for each mission, stage, game mode, character attacks, etc. Imagine a game where your £40 only gets you one stage, one mode, a couple of characters and the rest you have to buy separately.

It’s like that joke The Simpsons did ages ago where Milhouse is playing an arcade game of Waterworld, he takes one step and is told to insert 40 quarters to continue. If a line isn’t drawn soon gaming may very well feel like that.

I’m happy that games remain one of the few things that haven’t gone up in price over the years. It actually surprises me that they are still £40 each, despite development costs getting higher and development teams getting bigger. But this would be a sneaky way of increasing the cost of a full game from the standard £40 to somewhere closer to £100.

DLC can be of a significant size but then I expect that to be work down after a games full release and a large download, not content developed at the same time as the rest of the game and purposely held back.

Look at Rockstar and GTA IV’s Lost and the Damned and the Ballad of Gay Tony expansions; they know how to handle DLC. Significant content developed after GTA IV’s release.

If someone at Capcom is reading this know that I love the majority of your games but your attitude to DLC stinks. I love gaming and I don’t want to see it become a mess of locked content.