A thread for gamers...who despise paying for DLC

[Brian]

Not sure if I'm allowed to post this here or how many gamers are part of the GateWorld community but hey here's hoping!

Basically I'm tired of us gamers getting ripped off for map packs and other DLC (Downloadable content), having to pay more for them on top of an already overpriced game. It is not fair and it is not right. Big industry "leaders" (for lack of a better word) release games with a fraction of the content they should have just so they can charge extra for the rest of it later on down the line, in multiple transactions no less! That's ridiculous and unacceptable in my eyes.

So I've created a page on Facebook (as a start) to help raise awareness to the issue, gather gamers that are also sick and tired of being ripped off for bad games and having to pay even more for the "extra" content they deserve for free, and try to get these publishers and developers to see that enough is enough. We don't want it anymore and refuse to buy into the money grubbing scams.

Keep in mind PC gamers, Xbox gamers, Wii gamers and PS3 gamers are all gamers. We are all in this together.

Myself, and I hope many others here are fed up with the greed and want to bring the gaming industry back to where it belongs...where the developers and publishers think about the GAMERS FIRST!

For anyone old enough, think back to how great it was when games were released with the consumer in mind. Think back to when you would get constant updates and patches with fixes, enhancements to both single and multiplayer experiences as well as additional content including multiplayer maps all for free.

Remember when you were able to make maps and mods for games to keep the experience fresh and exciting? These days modding and map making isn't in the interest of the people putting out these games. Why? Well if you can make maps for a game, why on earth would you buy an extra map pack for $15? The entire experience of a video game is being ruined by money being thought of first. How can we make the most money, how can we get people to spend twice as much as the list price for our game. Questions that should never be thought of.

Mods and custom maps provide freedom, virtually unlimited and ever changing user based content within the games we love. It keeps the experience from getting stale because the content is always changing, and it's driven by us! The gamers!

We, the gamers, the consumers that buy the games put on the shelves are the driving force behind the video game industry. We need to remind companies of that fact and make sure they know we won't put up with being ripped off any longer. We need to take a stand, gamers of all platforms uniting to combat the greed that has taken over the gaming world.

It's GAMERS vs. GREED and the gamers need to win!

I invite you all to join up and "Like" our page on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fight-...51294358277116

You're invited to be an active part of the page because after all, without gamers...gaming can't exist! Feel free to show your support, complain about these money hungry companies, chat in the discussion board or reminisce and share stories of the older, better days of gaming, or spread the word and share stories about publishers and developers who have it right, by thinking of the gamers first! Spread your knowledge and experience to others on our page and don't forget to tell all your gamer friends about our cause. The more the merrier!

I know some people might say "Well just don't buy it" and yes that's an integral part of what we need to do to change things but having gamers come together as a community to go against this specific form of greed gives us a physical voice that can trump the simple fact of "doing nothing".

We're also on Twitter at http://twitter.com/fffdlc

It's small right now, and who knows what will come of it but you can't get anywhere without trying right? I personally am sick and tired of sitting back and doing nothing against issues like this. Word of mouth is all we've got right now.

Thanks guys, hopefully there are some GateWorlder's who are as passionate for gaming as they are Stargate!

[jmoz]

Don't play video games. Take up reading?

[Huaracocha]

Gret post, so much truth. It's all a natural part of being a big industry I suppose but it's gone waaaay too far.

The amount of content developers / publishers withhold from game releases to put into the 1st and 2nd DLC starting only weeks after launch. Games released at around £50, which is an exorbitant figure for a DVD anyway, to find the game only lasts 5-10 hours and you're done.. which would have been considered a joke in the old days.

Paying upwards of £7 for 2/3 maps for your favourite 1st person shooter(s), then doing so again, then again, then again at regular intervals. Putting extra content into games for people who pre-order (at the fantastic prices mentioned above) or order special editions for £70, £80 or £100+ which come with extra pieces of shiny plastic as well. It makes the monthly subscription fee for an MMO look like positive charity, especially when you consider that you have to pay a similar fee to Microsoft just to connect to their frikkin' Xbox Live network.

The question is, would we rather put up with these filthy, money-grabbing antics and have the wealth of high quality software titles we see now that the games industry is big business or go back to the lower budget, less cutting edge but somehow purer days of the Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore Amiga, Nintendo NES or Sega Megadrive? Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

I do often miss the days when games were about gameplay and a really good title would last weeks and weeks despite being only a fraction of 1mb in size. So often I ask people about a game they have or just hear a friend raving about a game and the first / only thing they say is, "oh it looks fantastic, gorgeous." Erm.. that's fine but is the actual game any good?!?

The most effective way around it I've found is just not to play the industry's game. I rarely buy new games except the odd 1 or 2 titles a year I'm really attracted to and a few games (FPS usually) here and there I want to play online with my friends. Even there I skip 1/2 the titles they invest in. I never buy DLC unless I really fall in love with a game, or for the aforementioned FPS games that are flavour of the month in my little circle.

If you're willing to forego playing the latest, 'greatest' titles at their time of launch then most usually drop in price significantly within a month or two, especially if you're willing to buy 2nd hand. Personally I try to avoid paying more than £40 when (rarely) buying at launch and refuse to pay over £30 (preferably £20 or less) for new games which is often doable quite soon after they cease to be FOTM.

Another great way to access the plethora of titles awaiting your gaming pleasure these days without overly lining the greedy pockets of major publishers is through game rental services. Taking a game for a week or even a few nights from the local Blockbusters or wherever can often leave you done with the game for the comparatively low cost of £5-10. Another option for those who must have the latest and greatest is buying new titles at their insane launch price then trading them back in for the next new title which can work out at not much more than the rental costs highlighted above.

I think the best economic model for the cost-aware gamer is monthly fee website rental services like LoveFilm or Boomerang (not sure what the US equivalent is). For a fee ranging from £10-25 pcm you can get as many titles as you wish, keeping them as long as you wish. The only restrictions being the amount of titles you have at any 1 time (usually 1-3) and the turnaround time of mailing them back and waiting for the next title(s). Some, such as Boomerang, even offer packages and options to significantly increase the odds of receiving those new launch titles you really want over and above others you've requested.

Well that turned out longer than I intended *ahem* sorry for the rant! As you can see I share your frustration at the mega-business which is now the gaming industry which I have known and loved since its infancy. I do question whether the transition from niche to mainstream has really done more good or more harm to the wonderful world of video games.

[Galileo_Galilee]

Here's the thing about downloadable content. I play one game like that which is Dungeons And Dragons Online (DDO for short). You pay for store points and download some content. But it also comes with free to play content as well. Now here are the biggest advantages that I see:

No monthly fee.

No expensive disk to install it first. You can download it directly from the website.

Once you have all the content downloaded, you don't have to pay for anything else ever again.

And personally, I've come to really like this kind of thing because of these advantages. Because here's the thing, on a monthly fee, when you don't pay, that's a month you can't play the game. With everything downloaded, you don't have to worry about paying the monthly fee.

[Tanith0709]

Would say that it's not just as big an issue for PC gamers as it is for consoles. For example take the Left 4 Dead series, on PC they are automatically updated for free on Steam but for consoles players they tended to have to pay a little (or use points) for new DLC's etc.

[General Jumper One]

I play STO (Star Trek Online) and I payed 240$ for a lifetime subscription, I like this because I will be able to play whenever I want, stop playing and say take a 2 month break and come back and resume. But they also are adding regular content to their ingame store, costumes, new special ships, new BOffs (bridge officers) ect. But you don't really have to buy anything to PLAY the game, it just makes it a bit more fun.

Now for a console game, I have no problem with paying for DLC either, these Devs should get money for their work and creativity. People don't work for free.

[Huaracocha]

Now for a console game, I have no problem with paying for DLC either, these Devs should get money for their work and creativity. People don't work for free.

Not many people do anyway! Devs work hard and they get paid big bucks as a result which I don't begrudge them. It's not the devs though who decide to hold back a large chunk of their finished game at launch and redistribute it as DLC to gouge consumers. I have no problem with paying for quality entertainment and I don't even mind occassionally paying a premium price for what I consider to be top quality products. I do however object to being milked like a cash cow, to being sold dross as diamonds and to being disrespected as a customer with cheap, facile marketing ploys.

[Galileo_Galilee]

Can you give us an example of those and which games you think use them?

[General Jumper One]

Can you give us an example of those and which games you think use them?

Use what?

[Huaracocha]

Can you give us an example of those and which games you think use them?

Surely; as far as being 'milked like a cash cow' that mainly goes to FPS shooter games with their constant map packs. Recent examples that spring to mind from my own experience are Halo Reach and Crysis 2 (less so). One of, if not the worst offender in this category is the Call of Duty series.

"Dross as diamonds" would apply to any of the truly woeful console games that you may have been lucky enough to avoid. Some awful ones I have played that spring to mind are "Jumper", "Avatar TLA: TBE" and one of the Cabela hunting games was truly terrible (some say they all are but I have enjoyed a couple of them). As mentioned I tend to rent games, if I had paid £40+ of hard-earned cash for this sort of game I'd feel like a crime had been committed against me.

"Disrespecting the customer with cheap, facile marketing ploys" - well where to start with this one? Some of the things I mentioned which a lot of publishers do such as withholding DLC that could be part of the launch title (Assassin's Creed 2, Mass Effect 2) or giving in-game content for pre-ordering that is unavailable to anyone else (Crackdown 2, Gears of War 2). I refuse to even calculate how much money I've been gouged out of by Activision (and to a lesser extent Harmonix) in order to use songs from previous games I have bought in newer ones (Guitar Hero / Rock Band series). To say nothing of the songs I bought that I can't use in newer ones because they can't be bothered to re-chart them. Way to punish customer loyalty - the more of their stuff you buy the more they gouge you.
On that subject, it was very nice the way loyal Halo 3 customers who had purchased every single bit of DLC at great expense were laughed at and disrespected by including all that DLC, for free, with Halo 3: ODST. Just to rub salt in the wound they made us buy ODST anyway since to get the last bit of DLC for Halo 3 you needed to. Without even a token reward or acknowledgement of those loyal customers who had previously bought all DLC and got nothing for it but two fingers.

Perhaps the ultimate example of cheap marketing ploys is EA re-releasing the same football / golf / basketball / <insert random sport here> game at least once a year, slightly repackaged and expecting us to pay for it. Admittedly they occassionally constitute a new game but more often than not it's just a tweaked version of the last one.

[Galileo_Galilee]

One of, if not the worst offender in this category is the Call of Duty series.

well, I don't see it for the PS2, and I loved that series for the PS2. But I don't have a PS3 so I couldn't say.

But thanks.

[Womble]

Hello everyone. My name is Womble, and I'm a victim of Fallout: New Vegas.

I've clocked about 400 hours on this game. It is beautifully done and very, very awesome.

It is also absurdly, laughably, never-seen-anything-like-that glitchy and buggy. Things fall through the floor, people get stuck waist-deep in rocks, Radscorpions float around upside down on their stingers, weapons supposed to be slung on people's backs float in the air a few feet away, weapon mods don't work, perks don't work, guns shoot way off, gameplay is unbalanced, faction reputations are way off, companion AI makes no sense, quests are broken and un-complete-able. Grafics stutter, crashes and CTDs- oh my! It is so glitchy that the developers actually apologized for releasing such a deficient product.

BUT it has DLCs! A whopping EIGHT DLCs were promised!

And so the players are waiting for the comprehensive patch to fix things. And waiting... and waiting... and waiting... andwaitingandwaitingandwaiting. For months. And finally it arrives- the long-promised patch... most of which is to address compatibility issues between the main game and the due-to-be-released DLC. Say flippin what?!? THE MAIN GAME ISN'T WORKING, AND YOU'RE FRETTING ABOUT DLC COMPATIBILITY? SERIOUSLY?!?

And it isn't as if the bugs are too hard to fix. Plenty of ad hoc bug fixes have already been produced by the gaming community by that point. Just look at what's been done and incorporate it into the patch, for crying out loud, is it that hard?

The DLCs themselves can't be patched, apparently. You're warned about it up front. You can buy them and enjoy the glitches for the rest of your gaming life.

But the DLCs have new stuff! New super-duper-pooper weapons that supercede everything that came before them and further unbalance the already unbalanced gameplay! The new ever-so-godly perks for some extra unbalancing on top! If you want even less balance, the DLCs offer new vending machines to freely buy the weapon repair kits you were supposed to craft out of scavenged pieces, instantly rendering one of the game's most useful perks borderline useless! The weapons which were supposed to be powerful yet expensive to use are no longer expensive to use, just powerful! And they raise your level cap, too! In a game where you already have more character points and perks than you know what to do with, you can now have another twenty levels' worth of character points and perks! You just can't have a simple quest in the vanilla game fixed, because sorting out dialogue triggers is entirely too time consuming for them developer folks.

[Huaracocha]

well, I don't see it for the PS2, and I loved that series for the PS2. But I don't have a PS3 so I couldn't say.

But thanks.

Ironically enough I can't comment for the PS2, having never had one But yeah, on x360 and PS3 their map packs are abundant, expensive and not overly large content wise.

@ Womble - I feel your pain man, having sunk a good 200 hrs+ into Fallout 3, which is very similar (same engine?) from what I've heard. Rather buggy and glitchy indeed but an awesome game for all that. One of my favourites is when it glitches loading an area / autosaving and I have to manually turn off the console. Then I load the game back up and the autosave file is corrupted. I've lost as much as 6 hours gameplay this way.. joy of joys!

There was indeed a day when games were tested and the majority of bugs fixed before release. Then there was a day, later on, when buggy games were released but patched after the event and ultimately would be in good shape. Nowadays bug fixing patches are a much lower priority since instead they prefer to be working on the next way to extract coin from us huddled masses rather than ensuring the quality of their product. Once again we can thank the miracle of DLC, in large part, for this questionable change in priorities.

[Galileo_Galilee]

They're a lower priority because of high demand to get the games out there for the public. The public wants them now, so there's a rush to get them out. However, Blizzard doesn't do this. They do their best to fix all the bugs before the release. They aren't perfect, but that's why sometimes their products are really slow to come out.

[Onealwasoverrated]

That's not always the case. When I installed Halflife and halflife source I ended up getting many free downloads and still get free games. It depends on the company really. The only free thing I've gotten from Blizzard entertainment is occasionally a free day of wow. Great! My sub fee gets bumped by a day. In 6 more years it might move forward a week! Or I might just stop buying bad expansions from terrible companies and play halflife instead.