Do you remember when developers would sell completed games to consumers, I sure do. It was a beautiful time to be a gamer, because the relationship between creator and customer was as simple as it gets. Nowadays, it’s less about pleasing fans by making a quality product, and more about squeezing out every last red cent out of our pockets in order to make as much profit as they possibly can. How do they do this you might ask? Through a little something called DLC.
In its simplest form, DLC, or downloadable content for those of you out who hate acronyms, are extra purchases a person can make towards their game for new features, levels, or items that were not included in the original release. These could be a new map pack for a shooting game, new outfits for characters, weapon drops, new missions, and so on. What this stuff is meant to do is add playtime to an already completed title, not include things that should’ve been there to begin with.
Sadly though, this has not been the case in recent memory, as a number or different people have not only tried to make consumers pay for higher difficulty settings, but they have also tried to increase prices on previously released content that came out close to ten years ago. The two companies I’m referring to here are Nintendo with Legend of Zelda:Breath of The Wild( Making Hard Mode part of $20 Season Pass) and Activision with Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered (Selling an Old Map Pack for $15 that used to cost $10). Apparently these companies thought they could sneak in a hard mode into an expansion pack, or pass of old content as new with a heftier price without us noticing. Guess what guys, we are not as stupid as you think we are.
So what causes this problem and what needs to be done to solve it? Well, the two main culprits here are time and money. When a developer needs to meet a deadline whether a game is finished or not, their need to rush a product out to market will often result in an unfinished experience that was not worth the price of admission. This will eventually lead them to release the rest of the game later, call it extra content, and try to charge people for it.
As far as solving this problem goes, the best thing we can do is to just let our wallets do the talking, and not buy something that looks too good to be true. What developers can do to help out can be summed up in a few words, finish what you start.
Well, that was my rant on this issue, what is your opinion on this topic? Let us know in the comments below.