On Disc DLC: What Are You Going to do About It?

Epic Games has joined the list of publishers including DLC on their discs with the Horde Command Pack for Gears of War 3. Executive producer Rod Fergusson discussed their reasoning:

“We’re not saying that everything on the disc is the product. The disc is another delivery mechanism.”

He explained, due to Gears 3 release being pushed back to September, it gave the DLC development team a bit of extra time so they were able to have it ready for the release date, and thought they’d save their users some time and bandwidth by simply including it on the disc.

You can conclude from this whatever you wish. Is it simply an attempt to make extra cash? A thoughtful gesture? Purely practical? We’ve discussed DLC a few times, and it is in of itself a topic of contention.

Initally, DLC was something you could buy to add a little extra to your game, It seems most people are accepting of this idea of DLC. If you don’t like, don’t buy it. You’ll still get the full experience of the game. What they take exception to is when they feel like bits of the game are deliberately “cut out”, so they can sold for extra as DLC, where as now it is becoming common to include it with the product, and have it unlocked for an extra fee, or in the recent case of Deus Ex, using DLC to “Complete the story”.

People feel that if you buy the disc, you should be able to access everything on it. Just like if you buy a car with air conditioning already installed, you should be able to use it without having to pay an extra fee to the manufacturer.

I’ve no doubt car manufacturers would do just that if they thought it would make them more money. However, an automobile is a significant investment, making the market far more competitive, and pulling a stunt like that would see a very rapid drop in sales. The DLC market, on the other hand, is quite cheap and publishers don’t have to compete for your DLC purchase. You want that unlock? You have to buy from them.

For any company, just about every decision revolves around a core principal: “What will make us the most amount of money with the least amount of investment?”. Public outcry doesn’t matter if it adds a few numbers to the bottom line.

Humans have a tendency to cry foul quickly and loudly, even if things aren’t that bad, and it’s impossible for a company to cater to them and remain profitable, so they’re not really too fussed about what people say beyond how it affects their income. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but for the most part it’s fair to say a businesses purpose is to generate revenue.

This is the crux of the issue. We’ve all head the term “Vote with your wallet”. At a glance, it simply means don’t spend money on things you don’t like, but there is much more to it than that. Business doesn’t live on reputation and good-will, it lives on customers spending money with them.

Their paying customers decide what they can get away with, and they will continue to push those boundaries until it starts affecting profits. Just like in Sim City, where you keep raising the tax rate until people start moving away. You want to see how much money you can get before they decide to stop giving it to you.

If your not happy with the way DLC is heading, then the best thing you can do is not buy it. Tell your friends not to buy it. If you really want to commit to it, don’t buy the base product at all. Then write the company an email explaining why you didn’t buy it. When it does poorly, they’ll have many emails telling them exactly why, and I guarantee you’d never see them do it again.

Of course, you could also feel that it’s not that big of a deal, that’s fine too. Like anything you vote for, there are usually some things you don’t like, but the parts you do like counter-balance that. For the time being, it seems gamers feel the quality of games out-weighs the behaviours of publishers.

Source: Kotaku.com.au