Kotaku’s “The Week In Evil DLC” appears as a sarcastic article gently mocking the people who scream from the mountain tops how they’ve been wronged by every piece of DLC released. For the most part I agree with this. Is DLC evil? No. How then can I have it first on my list? First let me clarify what I mean by DLC.
As most of you will already DLC is shorthand for downloadable content, but the term really should be divided into two different categories. Paid DLC and Free DLC. When talking of the evils of DLC we are generally referring to paid DLC because, let’s face it, people like free stuff. Yet I feel free DLC can also have its bad points.
The reason I don’t see DLC as evil is the same reason I don’t see a knife as evil. It’s merely a tool, a device people use to achieve a goal. There are very few tools that can be considered inherently evil, the evil lies in the application and motivation behind the use of the tool. A knife used to cut up vegetables to feed a group of orphans could hardly be considered evil but if the same knife were used on a murderous rampage there is surely evil there. It’s the same with DLC.
The reason DLC makes the top of my list lies in its application. Most games are developed and/or published by corporations. A corporation is one of these things that tend to lean towards evil as they have only one motivation. Money. People invest in a corporation because they want to make money, they want to see a return on their investment. They hire a CEO who they believe will be most likely to give them the greatest return on their investment. This CEO isn’t needed evil either, (s)he’s just doing the job they were hired to do. They have to consider themselves and their families to consider so they do it as best as they can so the investors don’t replace them with someone else.
Pursuit of money at the expense of all other considerations has to be considered evil. This natural state of existence for corporation also provides a level of protection from guilt, the CEO is just doing their job and the investors are faceless to the masses, essentially anonymous and protected as one among many. They will do whatever they can to maximise profits, a goal with definitely includes abusing DLC. They will try and charge you full price for a part of a game and then, now they have you hooked, sell you the remaining pieces one at a time. They do this because we let them.
As businesses get smaller, down to partnerships and little independents this temptation to evil lessens. Money may no longer be the sole motivating factor. Some businesses also make games because they like them. Some corporations realise that consumer good will can make them as much money as squeezing your customers until they cry so not all businesses engage in evil practices, but right now I’m concerned with the ones that do.
For a recent example of this let’s have a look at Mass Effect 3. This is a game with a very strong brand so they have some room to experiment and see just what they can get away with. The game is released with paid DLC already available and a multiplayer mode glued on. To me this multiplayer mode was obviously designed with the primary intention of milking their customers’ dry of all their cash until there is nothing left but a broken Husk (couldn’t help myself.)
The Mass Effect games have, up to this point, been single player experiences. In the days before DLC they would have sold you the game, you would have played it and that would have been it. Now this is where things get tricky. Did the micro transactions actually take anything from the game?
Paid DLC pack that includes one of the most potentially interesting characters, a Prothean, came out with the game on release day. Now I played the game through without this DLC and didn’t notice anything missing, but would this have been included if they didn’t have the option to charge extra for it? They would have wanted to make the best game they could so the most people would consider buying it, yet there comes a point where they would be getting less back for the money spent on including extra content then the sales it generates. How do you tell DLC is something the company had taken out of the game to sell to you later, or something genuinely created to enhance the experience and enjoyment of a product past the point that would have been possible otherwise?
There is no simple answer for this. You have to look at the content and decide for yourself if it is worth your money. Even free DLC can be evil. Sticking with the Mass Effect example let’s look at the multi player.
I play the multiplayer, It gives you something to do once you’ve worn yourself out on the story. They even released free DLC. FREE! How can this be a bad thing? Look at how the multi player is designed. While fun, there is nothing particularly outstanding about the horde mode. You fight of waves of enemies, every now and then you get an objective to break things up a bit. As you play though it you get experience to unlock new powers and money to unlock new weapons.
Yet this all happens very slowly. It’s designed to start to feel like a chore unless you pay them extra money to speed up the process. You can’t even control what you buy with this money. It’s randomised, making it essentially gambling when you are trying to unlock a particular item. They even have the store flash up with “NEW!” every time you are on the multiplayer lobby to encourage you to look at it and tempt yourself.
Run out of things to spend your money on? FREE downloadable content that you can unlock now if you PAY for it!
They are intentionally making the game experience worse for people who don’t keep paying them more and more money. How can that not be a bad thing for ? They even make sure you have to look at multiplayer if you want to get the “best” ending in the single player story. It’s like a casino making you walk past the pokies to get to the restaurant.
Another example of when even free DLC can be evil is patches. Patches can a good thing, it means if there is a way for companies to fix issues they find in their products after it has been printed onto the discs. But what when they already know of the issues? “It’s OK,” says the boss, “we’ll just patch it post release.” Now they’ve decided to sell a product they know is broken. It doesn’t function they way the customer expects it to. Where does this leave customers without internet access? What if they never find a fix for the problem?
I did promise at the start I’d tell you how to stop these things. Well you can’t. At least no way I know of. You can, however reduce the problem. Remember the part where I said corporations (and businesses in general) want to make money? Well think of an economy as the world’s biggest democracy where your wallet is your ballot paper.
Every cent you spend on something is a vote for that to survive. If you think that the way a company is releasing DLC is evil then don’t buy the product. If you really don’t like it don’t buy any of their games, at the very least don’t buy the DLC. By all means write the companies and tell them you don’t like what they are doing but the fact of the matter is, if you still buy their product, they don’t care.
Ever wonder why there are so many Call of Duty clones out there? It’s because that series made enough money that they could hire two private armies and recrate every game. People voted billions of times that they like COD. Now people are finally getting sick of COD and its clones they are stopping buying them. As business notice this they start looking for the next billion dollar formula instead.
Remember I said I didn’t play Mass Effect 3 with the Prothean DLC? That’s because I didn’t like the way they did that, so I didn’t buy it. That would only encourage them. I’m a massive fan of the Total War games. Yet when they released Empire: Total War in suck a buggy state it was almost entirely unplayable the next game, Napoleon: total War, was the first one since Rome Total war I didn’t pre order.
It’s our responsibility as consumers to prevent businesses from getting away with being evil. Think about how we spend our money and show them that amoral practices don’t pay off. When you come across something you think is evil, spend your money on something else instead. If they don’t have any competitors with similar games you can buy a movie or go to a concert instead. There is enough choose in this world that we can chose not to buy a game and not be starved for entertainment.
In summary, DLC is not by default evil, often can be. The best way to combat it is to chose how you spend your money carefully. Everybody’s favourite celebrity, Captain Planet, says it best. “The power is yours!”
Authors Note: Owen Good, keep up the Evil DLC posts. I laugh, I cry, one day I may even be informed of something I would consider purchasing.
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