Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by dyne

Eh. Free DLC adds longevity. If everything was there day 1 you'd have little reason to return to a game later. I agree though that day 1 paid DLC is a sham and should never be tolerated.

I really wish I was into this series. There is so much to this game. It's pretty nuts.

It depends on how you define longevity. Sure, when released sometime after the initial game, it gives people extra incentive to pick it up again. But for people who keep their games long term and may play them again years down the road, it's a potential issue. If my Wii U breaks 5 to 10 years from now and I obtain a working replacement, there's no guarantee that Nintendo will still support the online network and downloads for it. I may not be able to re-aquire that content (short of going through some kind of unofficial hack-based work around), and will be stuck only playing the content that comes on the disc in the first place.


While there are a few instances where dlc can be argued as a necessary evil (the Rockband music library would never have been as expansive and robust without it), more often than not it's handled poorly.


Even the way people justify some of it is kind of silly. Take for instance your above criticism of day one paid dlc. I agree, that sucks. But some people argue that it's "okay" if it comes out later, theoretically defending it on the basis that it's something that they finished programming after the game was already released.

But we don't necessarily know that was even the case. They could have had everything ready to go and then heald off on releasing the dlc until later. Or perhaps it wasn't "ready to go" when the discs went into production or even when the game was released, but only because they knew that since they weren't going to release it until later, they didn't have to make it an immediate priority. Perhaps it's content that could have and should have been on the disc as part of the game, or even could have been released on day one as dlc (which again still sucks), but they took their time knowing what their sales strategy would be. And even if including it on the disc simply as part of the game from the get go would have slightly delayed the release of the disc... so what? I'd rather wait a bit longer and get more content, then. Heck, if they need to make more money off of the release, charge more for it, but include all of the content that we would be nickled and dimed for after the fact. If I'm going to pay that money anyway, at least sell it to me in a manner that's as lease of a rip off as possible.



I even laugh at people who get offended on practices like Capcom when they would have "on-disc" dlc (in which the content is on the disc, but behind a separate pay wall), but find that download based dlc to be perfectly fine. Don't get me wrong, I find the idea of on-disc dlc to be offensive as well. But what I find hilarious is the idea that if they leave it off of the disc and make you download it, somehow that combined with the timing of when the content is made available somehow makes it "a-okay." You are still paying the same amount of extra money for it either way, only now you have to download the data and have it take up extra space on your hard drive/system storage, and in some cases you have to wait to be able to buy it and use it. Yeah, that makes it better!

It's kind of like telling someone that they are a jag-off if they punch you in the stomach with their left hand, but it's perfectly fine if they do it with their right hand (even if they punch you harder with the right hand than they would with the left).

It's even more hilarious when you are effectively forced to download the dlc content via a "free" update patch, but cannot use it without paying for it. Since update patches (which even those I don't agree with as the game should be finalized on the disc IMO) are free, tend to "fix" issues with any given game, and are effectively something that you are entitled to by way of having purchased the disc, on sheer principle it's really no different than having the content on the disc, locked behind a paywall. Only now you have the added in convenience of having to wait for the download, have it take up space on your system memory/hard drive (with that inconvenience even effecting those who don't even plan to bother with the dlc).



Part of the issue is that while they are different forms of entertainment, I look at my games collection in a similar manner as my movie collection. I want to be able to go back and watch/play them when I want, possibly years down the road, even if they aren't necessarily re-released on the next format (which in the case of games, far fewer titles are re-released on the next format than with movies). And I don't think anyone would tollerate buying 70% of a movie on a disc, and having to pay to download the rest of it just to watch it in full from a service that we may not necessarily be able to count on being around years down the in the event that a player needs to be replaced and the content redownloaded. Yet with gaming, this is somehow considered perfectly fine.

The only rational response to this is to realize how simply f-ing stupid this practice is.