Some Players Want Day-1 DLC, Says BioWare

An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at GDC Europe this week, BioWare Montreal's Fernando Melo spoke about how the oft-disparaged first-day downloadable content for video games is actually something a significant amount of players want. 'Melo argued that on the occasions when BioWare hasn't provided DLC from day one, those players who complete the game quickly then complained that there was nothing more to play and asked for extra content. If DLC isn't provided for these players, they may well move on to a different game and never come back to play DLC later on. As proof that day one DLC also works in terms of sales, Melo said that 53 percent of all sales for the first Dragon Age: Origins DLC pack — which was released on the same day as the full game — were made on release day."

Comments

Are you serious?

[NettiWelho]

They want the frigging Day-1 DLC because the content currently in Day-1 DLC was supposed to be in Day-0 product.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed.

What this shows is that the serving size of the base game was simply too small.

And that some people would rather order additional sides than go to a different restaurant with larger mains...

Re:Are you serious?

[trunicated]

Day 1 DLC is generally worked on in the months between going gold and certification. Would it be better for them to add an arbitrary delay so that the DLC, which is completed in time for day 1, is instead delivered on day 30 or 60? Granted, this is generally the reason with Console games, but then again most day 1 DLC is for consoles (and their PC versions).

Re:Are you serious?

[Internetuser1248]

I don't know about consoles, but in PC games this is called a patch. If there is still work to be done in the 30-60 days before release that can't be included in the main release, you release it as a patch on day 1. What is the difference between dlc and a patch you ask? Easy, dlc is a patch that costs money. Support companies like tripwire interactive. Their game Red Orchestra patched in 3 separate content expansions over the game's lifetime, and users weren't charged a cent. These expansions contained new maps, vehicles, skins, weapons, just about a complete new version of the game. Tripwire is also just an example, there are many companies that continue to support and reward their customers for the initial purchase. Bioware used to be good. New bioware can suck my dick, and if they are very very good at it they might get some liquid dlc.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there's a certification process required by the platform owner to ensure baseline quality. During that process only bug fixes go into the product. Once approved for physical media, there's manufacturing and logistics to get the game in the stores, etc. that also adds significant delay.

Bottom line is, for a AAA game, there's a good 2 months at the very least before launch when nothing much goes on with the game. DLC is worked on in that period, and if it doesn't hit the mark and needs 2-3 weeks more, it's not a big deal. Risk management.

I'm a game developper and I know people like to rag on DLC and how it's bad and mean (But 20$ expansion packs were totally cool back in the day, go figure), but it's extra content. Yes, there's on-disc DLC (most often tied into promotion with different stores) and stuff like that. Yes there are DLC packages that are a total rip-off. But it's just a delivery method...

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, it doesn't feel like extra content! People felt expansion packs were totally cool cause THEY _ARE_ TOTALLY COOL. Day 1 and Month 1 DLCs feel like aspects that were planned for the game and then taken out during the meeting with marketing & sales, or budgeting. DLC should NOT feel like the missing parts of a game. What were "expansion packs" of yesterday feel like the of sequels today, and yes, they are still cool. DLC feels like crap.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, it doesn't feel like extra content! People felt expansion packs were totally cool cause THEY _ARE_ TOTALLY COOL. Day 1 and Month 1 DLCs feel like aspects that were planned for the game and then taken out during the meeting with marketing & sales, or budgeting. DLC should NOT feel like the missing parts of a game. What were "expansion packs" of yesterday feel like the of sequels today, and yes, they are still cool. DLC feels like crap.

This person hits in on the head. In the old days expansion packs were more like sequels (or intermediate episodes until the actual sequel), they always took place after the game.

DLCs on the other hand tend to be content that didn't make it into the game, this is apparent in that they are usually set inside the timeline of the game rather than after it. It's really obvious when the game refers to the DLC content, making it apparent that it was cut out (or deliberately held behind). Fallout: New Vegas is a good example of this with the Lonesome Road DLC, right from the first hour of the game NPCs are already referencing it. Also unlike Fallout 3 which had DLCs retcon their entrances into the game world where they didn't exist before (entire buildings popping out of nowhere) in New Vegas the entrances to the DLC locations are not only already in the game world but even have quick-travel points on the map.

The developers of Fallout: New Vegas admitted that the game needed another several months to truly be finished, just about everything in the DLCs was meant to be in the game itself (and would have been much better integrated into it) and even the game world map has huge areas that you never visit (that empty space to the West is where The Divide is located). However the publishers would much rather put those parts into DLCs so they can charge more for it, then later release a new edition of the game with all the DLCs included (and the price jacked up to cover it).

Re:Are you serious?

[FatLittleMonkey]

It seems to me that the main game is what we used to get as a playable demo. A few hours of free but limited game-play to give you a taste of the full unlocked game. Now those two-to-four hours are the full game.

If over 50% of your players finish your whole AAA game on the release day, you're doing it wrong.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting, 1080p graphics, online play, etc. etc. etc.
You can't expect production values and features to go up and up and up while prices stay the same..

Sure I can. Know why? The user base is increasing. The effeciencies are getting better. Sure there is more production value and more complex mechanisms going into games but they sure are not getting longer by any significant amount. I certanly don't weep for the game companies. They are ruthless with firings of staff and yet they reap enourmous profits. If they are not fleecing the consumer then fine but when they start giving us the middle finger then I start getting a little frustrated.

Re:Are you serious?

[Sir_Sri]

Kinda....

Games used to have things like pre-order bonuses and so on. That was fine when there were a lot less games, getting a guaranteed pre order was trivial and when you could have reasonable confidence that a developer wouldn't make crap.

But times change. If you're a bit OCD, a bit of a completionist or if you just want everything having all the goodies some people get for 'free' (or bundled with things you don't want like a statue) you still might want that same content, which is DLC, and might be willing to pay for it.

Some of the Bioware DLC then makes sense, in the scope of say an extra character or an extra mission that you want to see when you play the game. And for say 5 dollars it's still cheaper than a 10 dollar special edition with an art book that you don't want. Think of some DLC then as 'a la carte' limited/collectors/special edition parts.

Day-1 DLC was supposed to be in Day-0 product.

That's both subjective on a case by case basis, and really hard to argue in a lot of cases. Charging 5 dollars for day 1 DLC is partly a way of increasing the price by 5 dollars but cutting the various middle men out of the process. If you are a semi indie studio and you sell a game for 50 bucks at Walmart, walmart takes about 15 bucks (steam, gamestop about the same), your publisher takes 17 or so, and you're left with 17. But you get 100% of the DLC. So rather than getting 17 dollars for a copy you just got 22 (without having to push the whole cost through the chain). Usually publishers these days are smart enough to demand a cut of the DLC so it goes from being the publisher getting 35 bucks to split with you to getting 40 to split with you, but either way, the developer still takes home a lot more cash this way.

Most DLC is also not really major, relative to the price. A 5 dollar DLC doesn't have 1/10th the content of the game in it, if you're really lucky it has 1/20th, so you're significantly overpaying for that one piece of content in the hopes that more money goes back to the people who actually made the product than the people who distributed the product or left it in a box in their bathroom waiting for you.

Lets take a non bioware topical example: Guild Wars 2. Every retailer near where I am sold out on pre -orders of the collectors edition day one. Too bad I was away that day on business and missed my pre-order chance. Now with a 'digital deluxe' or similar edition I'm basically buying in a bundled DLC, call it whatever you want, you're paying for day 1 DLC. So I can't get the collectors edition, or at least, I can't be sure I can get the collectors edition, but I can be reasonably sure I can get the important game content one way or another.

In short: your concept of DLC and his aren't necessarily the same thing. You're not wrong, but neither is he. That perspective matters a lot. He's talking to other game developers, and in that sense he's right. Day 1 DLC (including in collectors editions or content that could have been in collectors editions but a player didn't buy that) is hugely popular, and that should be obvious enough to everyone.

Extra less relevant bits:
Dragon age origins (the product in question) launched with 3 version. Regular retail. Collectors (physical) and digital deluxe. The digital deluxe had a *code* to download the day 1 DLC for free (so he's counting that in his stats almost certainly since it wasn't technically bundled), but the digital deluxe had a soundtrack and some desktop theme crap too. Why pay for the sound track and desktop wallpapers when you can just buy the actually game content for 7 bucks or whatever, save yourself 3 dollars, (or maybe 13, i can't remember). In his context a significant portion of the launch day had people buying basically the 2 special editions or a la carte versions of the special editions.

Re:Are you serious?

[geminidomino]

The problem with this excuse is this: It's becoming more and more common that the "Day 1 DLC" is actually ON the damned disc, which means it was done BEFORE "going gold" (creating the master disc).

Re:Are you serious?

[tlhIngan]

Because there's a certification process required by the platform owner to ensure baseline quality.

And that process does not apply to DLC content? Are you sure?

Downloadables are faster.

You might not know this, but once a product is finished, there's often a 2+ month lead time before it can be sold. In that time, the pressings have to be scheduled in, followed by the warehousing and distribution.

If the game is ready, it goes into cert, which can take a month while issues that come up are fixed and resolved. In the meantime, you have a bunch of developers sitting around (rarely do you get something that involves the entire team - those kind of bugs are usually caught before it goes into cert). Once approved, the discs can be pressed (alongside with other things for special and limited editions), which can take another month, from then it's another month to ship it to the various retailer warehouses and for them to ship it to their individual stores.

So there can easily be a 2-to-3 month period of idleness for developers. You could either lay most of them off, keeping the few you need to handle launch day issues, or have them producing DLC in the meantime. As it's downloadable, once it's passed cert, it goes into the store - no waiting for pressing or distribution (which are the slow parts).

The process can be sped up if you're doing a console exclusive title or if the manufacturer really wants your game, but you're still looking at over a month.

Even if they put all the day-1 content on the disc and delay the certification and release by a month, you'd still have idle developers during cert/pressing/distribution. Who might as well work on DLC and probably finish some stuff they couldn't do during main development. Leading to more day-1 DLC.

Re:Are you serious?

[Durrik]

Its a different process. I also work in the gaming industry, and on consoles.

The base game is usually a 10 week lead time from 'gold' (or final) till its on the shelves. Most of that time is certification with 1st party. There's one first party that wants 12 weeks of cert time. I've also worked on a game with an accelerated release schedule. Final, cert and ship in 3-4 weeks

Patches are usually 2 weeks, though maybe 4 weeks sometimes. Though I've had patch go through in two days before, of course that was the second submission of the patch, and the change was as stupid icon change (We put it on the left, where it fit better with the art, they demanded it on the right).

If the DLC doesn't have compiled code in it, then the DLC usually breezes through, maybe taking a week, though one 1st party likes to take 6 weeks with them.

Anyone in the industry that's had to deal with certification can tell you what a pain it is. There's no consistency to the process. One game might submit following one process and a game released three weeks later might follow a different process, it all depends on how much the 1st party wants your game on their console. Or how much they want to screw around with you.

Re:Are you serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting, 1080p graphics, online play, etc. etc. etc.
You can't expect production values and features to go up and up and up while prices stay the same..

The fuck?

I've played plenty of games in the late 90s and early 00s that were fully voice acted and had LAN if not online play. Hell, fucking Command and Conquer 95 (which came out in 1995) had fully acted FMVs with actors and sound stages. Jesus Christ. Ever played Half-Life (the first one), that was 1998. You're full of crap.

The problem has nothing to do with production costs, it's the business model that's changed. The gaming industry used to be made up of people who loved games and wanted to make a reasonable profit producing new awesome ones. It's now made of suits that treat their product as a line item in a spreadsheet and a check-list, there's no drive for quality or fair dealing; very few people want to make a good game nowadays, they just want to make McDonalds — something that achieves maximum revenue with a minimum of investment or artistic integrity.

"DLC feels like crap."
So don't buy it?
And if the main game isn't worth the money, don't buy that either.

Can you teach me how to see into the future as well? I don't see how else I can avoid paying for a non-refundable product that sucks even though I can't know that it sucks before I paid for it.

Re:Are you serious?

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention Valve has already shown us that with digital distribution its better to have LOWER not higher prices if you want maximum profits. I wish I'd thought to save the link because there was a little article I read when origin was about to roll out where one of the guys from Valve pointed out when they sold L4D 2 at some crazy low price like $10 their profits for that game went up something like 1700% because it doesn't cost shit to distribute digitally and the amount of people they had buying caused their returns on the game to go through the roof.

People hate the day 1 DLC because its often EXACTLY what it feels like, core sections of the game removed and then resold, so that a $60 game becomes a $90+ game just to have a complete working game, its a fricking ripoff. There is only ONE type of day 1 DLC that doesn't piss me off and that is the non gameplay related silly shit, the TF2 hats and SR 3 silly costumes kinda stuff where you can tell its just the devs goofing off. I mean nowhere in SR 3 that I saw were the characters talking about how they needed to get a witch costume and fly on a broom or drive around in a people shooting Genkimobile.

Re:Are you serious?

[grumbel]

So don't buy it?

The problem with DLC isn't one of money, but that it fractures the game. Instead of one well designed product that fits together, you have a dozens of products that sort of kind of fit together. Bonus DLC weapons are often out of balance, the story DLC often doesn't quite fit in, multiplayer maps just make it more troublesome to find people to play with and costumes are just useless. "Don't buy" isn't a solution, as the main game still might reference the missing content, so when you don't buy it, you still know there is a piece missing from the game that makes it feel incomplete and sometimes you don't even know you got it, as it automatically comes with your Game of the Year edition. There is also a general lack of quality in DLC, as most of it ends up being far less quality then the main game.

Sometimes there is of course DLC that takes more the form of an expansion pack and truly does tell a piece of story that is completely optional to the main game and still doesn't feel like a useless addition, but even those can be a little annoying, as DLC means they have to be short and cheap. Thus even when they are actually good, they just end up feeling short and a full blown expansion pack would have been better.

In the end DLC is nothing but a money grab and nobody can honestly tell me that it's somehow the best way to deliver a game to give the user the best experience. DLC has done nothing but make gaming more complicated and frustrating. From a business standpoint it makes sense, from an entertainment point of view it's a really shitty idea.

"Back in the day" you didn't have voice acting,

Voice acting has been a normal feature since 1993, it has been around for a while. Network play existed even earlier and plenty games on my Amiga had Modem support. 1080? Nothing all to special, a good CRT could give you 1280x1024 long before any HD-TV was around.

Re:Are you serious?

[UnknownSoldier]

> Valve pointed out when they sold L4D 2 at some crazy low price like $10 their profits for that game went up something like 1700%

Actually L4D1 was 3000% more sales ;-)

You're probably thinking of the 1600% new steam customers.
i.e.
"Newell also mentioned that new Steam customers jumped 1600% over the same weekend, according to G4TV. Retail sales remained constant."

They also revealed gamers are extremely sensitive to pricing. (Digressing slightly, Hell most of my steam friends don't buy new games until they go one sale for $10. We already got a big backlog of great games to play, we'll get all the patches, plus we'll have better hardware to run a 2-year old game on.)

"The massive Steam holiday sale was also a big win for Valve and its partners. The following holiday sales data was released, showing the sales breakdown organized by price reduction:"
                10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
                25% sale = 245% increase in sales
                50% sale = 320% increase in sales
                75% sale = 1470% increase in sales

References:
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/20/steams-left-4-dead-sale-increased-purchase-infection-by-3000/
http://www.shacknews.com/article/57308/valve-left-4-dead-half

Well fuck.

[XiaoMing]

You know what that really means? We're now going to "get what we want" because more companies will just leave out things that would be in the game otherwise and monetize it into "Day1 DLC" instead.

Re:Well fuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and if your game takes me only a day to complete I doubt I'm going to bother to pay for your DLC.

Re:Well fuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is stupid.

It makes no difference to the company whether you play a game or not, the only thing that matters is whether you pay for it. If you pirate to save money, then yes that's wrong. If you pirate because you were not going to buy it anyway, then that's fine.

Companies need to learn to offer good games. Day 1 DLCs are scams. Short games are scams. DRM is a scam. The moment your game has any of these attributes, I do not buy it. However I do buy a few dozen games and spend over $1000 a year on games that do not have any of the above.
And if you still don't like the fact that I pirate your DRM-ridden game, well just tell yourself that you scammed all the people who bought it and didn't deserve all that money in the first place.

But more importantly: I did not pirate until recently. I was in full boycott mode when it came to music, movies and games I didn't like.
But then some companies decided they could violate our rights to make profits - you've heard of SOPA I presume. From then on, this was war. I no longer care about being nice and doing the right thing and not using what I didn't pay for. Now I download for free from all the companies who supported SOPA or tried to make DRM circumvention illegal, etc. Now I want to take advantage of those scumbags. Thank you for the free games, EA and Ubisoft (and others). That's what you get when you fuck with me.

Also, what are you going to do to stop me? Pass SOPA 2? LOL!
Go cry under a couch, clown.

Re:Well fuck.

[poity]

Seriously, who are these people who finish an RPG in 1 day? Do they pay for a hooker and finish in 2 minutes? Do they order a fine steak and drink it out of a blender? What the world?

DLC? really?

[tulmad]

Or you could, I dunno, release the whole fucking game all at once.

Solution

[Mystra_x64]

I have a solution for you. Just release half of your game and put the rest in DLC. Pure genius. Too bad it's not just my imagination.

Re:Solution

[Exitar]

Just release the loading screen and put the *whole* game in DLC!

Still doesn't explain why...

[Sydin]

They don't just take that "Day One DLC" that everybody wants so much, and just makes it a part of the initial release at no extra charge. Why does it have to be DLC at all? It's already finished and ready to be played, right? So why isn't already on the disk with the rest of the content I bought? If people are finishing your game and complaining they want more to do, it doesn't mean people want to pay MORE for more content. It means people didn't feel they got $60 worth of content in the game, only for the publisher to turn around and demand more money if you want to be satisfied. If somebody orders a full cake, you cannot only give them 3/4's of it, charge extra for the remaining 1/4, and then turn around and claim that people are obviously clamoring to pay for that extra 1/4. That's now how it works, Bioware.

translation

[Trepidity]

When he says there are players who "want" Day-1 DLC, what he means is that there are players who will buy Day-1 DLC. Therefore Bioware is going to keep doing it.

Re:DLC? really?

[White Flame]

I'm old and crotchety and can't stand that sort of whining either, but I think it's less "I want it now" and more to do with what publishers can get away for their boxed releases. I think the gaming audience does have some legitimate complaints about this sort of stuff.

Re:DLC? really?

[TFAFalcon]

Exactly. It's interesting that the Bioware drone mentions Dragon Age, since the DLC was advertised IN the game. You reached a quest giver, and he told you that you had to buy his quest!

Ugh, not this again.

[DrEldarion]

People who rail against day 1 DLC have no idea how releasing a game works. Especially with giant sprawling games, once you near the release date, there are a lot of specialists who have completed their contribution to the final project. Artists may be done with their portion, story writers may be done with their portion, certain programming teams may be done with their portion, etc. They need something to do, so they start working on DLC.

"Ah, but they could put that right on the disc in the first place!", you may say. No, they can't. By this point, the game needs to be finalized so they can thoroughly test it, create a master copy, and begin mass production. In the month(s) that this can take on a large title, there's plenty of time to get a significant DLC pack out.

Now, I'm not saying ALL day 1 DLC is because of this (especially rageworthy is something that's on-disc but a day 1 "unlock" DLC) but a very significant portion is. They're not trying to cheat you out of content you should have had, they're just making good use of the time it takes for a game to go from finished to available in stores.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[Dyinobal]

There have been times where the 'day 1 dlc' data was on the disk, and all buying the dlc did was allow you to access it.

Re:Ugh, not this again.

[DrEldarion]

How often do YOU write code for ridiculously complex systems that always works for every use case anyone ever throws at it and stays bug free forever?

I'm not in the game industry, but with the projects I work on things are somewhat parallel. There are people (DB admins, UI designers, etc) whose contributions are mostly in the beginning of a project who can start working on V2 features once they've finished up the V1 stuff. Bugs happen, and they need to be fixed after people start using the product in weird ways and uncover them.

I'd think that Slashdot of all places would have people who understand how this stuff works.

Re:DLC? really?

[ifiwereasculptor]

True. And that's mostly because they are now making games too full of shiny. Lots of cutscenes, voice actors, gorgeous maps and models, a plethora of sidequests... which is great, really, but it drives the cost of the thing way up. And in the midst of all that, they often forget to make the game interesting to play. Or even finish the damn thing. Me, I'd rather have lots of 9.99 games like Braid than 59.99 + 9.99 DLC like Mass Effect 3. The first is way cheaper to make, but incredible from start to finish and never, ever, feels stale. An engrossing experience from start to finish. The latter is amazing mostly because of its magnitude, but its gameplay is quite repetitive, most of its characters feel superfluous because of the current trend towards extreme story modularization (which is The Way Of The DLC, BTW) and... let's just not speak about that sorry excuse for an ending, ok?

Re:DLC? really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The one that gets me is the "DLC" that isn't even DLC. Instead, it just unlocks content that was already on the CD/DVD.

Re:DLC? really?

[Tapewolf]

Exactly. It's interesting that the Bioware drone mentions Dragon Age, since the DLC was advertised IN the game. You reached a quest giver, and he told you that you had to buy his quest!

And that is the reason I never completed the game, I got sick to death of having the suspension of disbelief ruined by its blatant attempts to nickle-and-dime me.
  Okay, so I was kind of pissed that I wasn't going to get the Werewolf Army I'd hoped for to battle the undead, but what pushed me to breaking point was finding someone on the way to the Dwarf City who was desperate to have their Significant Other rescued or somesuch. I figured it would help me get over losing the wolf army, so I agreed - and he demanded money for the privilege of having his beloved back. So I played System Shock instead.

Just wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until the "game of the year" or "platinum edition" or "gold edition" or "diamond edition" or "complete edition" goes on sale for $10 and you'll have ALL the DLC on day 1. On top of that, most of the compatibility and quest bugs will have been squashed.

Problem solved.

Re:X-Com

[calmofthestorm]

Ditto, except MOO 1 not MOO 2 (I play it some but it's just not as good as the original).

Speaking of not as good as the original, I also still play TFTD. Tacky and unoriginal as the story may be, it has some elements I like.

BTW have you seen XComUtil? (ironically, the guy's now at BioWare): https://sites.google.com/site/stjones/xcomutil Speaking of DLC...

Also http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/69341191/xenonauts/ and http://ufoai.org/wiki/index.php/News (I've played the latter, it's excellent).

Bioware is full of shit and why DLC is bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bioware are blatant liars and greedy money mongers. Nothing else. Ever since they have joined with EA they have gotten worse and worse and worse. For many many years bioware made great games but ever since they joined with EA they have just been pimping dlc left and right and creating games that for the first time in their history have been garbage. All the DLC codes they were whoring in dozens of products for mass effect. Dragon age was pimping DLC before its release and it was a shit game. Even knights of the old republic is a major let down. Bioware's prestiege and pedigree has gone right down the crapper since joining EA.

Bioware before tried to say "Well the reason we had day 1 DLC for mass effect 3 was because we finished the game 6 weeks before it was released and that finished product had to have 6 weeks to be approved, then packaged and shipped to store. So in that time we decided to create the day 1 DLC to keep our teams busy blah blah blah". Bullshit. You cant tell me they suddenly at the drop of a hat decided to write, design, storyboard, create, build, code, debug, trouble shoot, beta test, bring voice actors in to record dialouge, have artists create the levels, sound guys put in effects, compile the code, submit it to sony/microsoft for approval to be uploaded and then uploaded it in less than 6 weeks? Horse shit.

Then what happens when mass effect 3 turns out to be yet another bioware turd? They blame the gamers. That bitch at bioware actually had the balls to say "gamers arent developers so dont act like them" because gamers didnt like the game. Ok sure Im not a developer, but that doesnt mean I cant know if I like something or not. Im no chef but I damn sure can tell you mcdonalds hamburgers suck, Im no director but I really hated the transformers movies, Im no author but I dont like the book atlus shruged. Just because I dont make games doesnt mean Im not able to dislike them and it doesnt mean I should automatically like everything just because the creator tells me I should because they say so.

So in short. Fuck bioware.

And now. Why DLC is bullshit.

1) When you pay for DLC you are telling developers "I want to pay more for my games. I am willing to pay you more than 60 dollars for my game". The more you buy DLC the higher the chances of games costing more instead of less because you prove youre willing to spend over msrp for a game.

2) Its all digital and you will never own it. DLC is digital content. You pay for it but you dont actually own it. You cant sell it, you cant trade it, you cant let a friend borrorow it and in 10 years from now Im willing to bet you wont even be able to download it again.

3) DLC encourages developers to split up content for the game you paid for full price for to sell you later. They design a game they say "We will take out this part and that part and sell it to them as extra" instead of saying "They paid full price for a game so they should get the full game". Developers/publishers would probablly sell more games if they would actually give their customers full games instead of selling partial games at full price and selling the rest for even more money.

4) DLC pisses off gamers when its sold as incentives at different stores. Say a game is coming out and 3 different stores has bonus DLC codes with each one being different. Now for gamers who really want that game and to play everything thats a asshole move.

Bottom line is I dont support developers that pimp DLC a lot, especially before the full game actually comes out. I buy their games used so I dont give them a single cent.

Fuck bioware and fuck every developer like them that forces DLC down our throats and then says we want it. Dont buy their games new, buy them used or pirate them.