Is paid DLC killing games or saving them?
The question of paid DLC in games is a tricky matter.
For some gamers, the prospect of having to pay for anything past the moment they own a game is out of the question, despicable and a down-right disgraceful trade that is terrorising the very existence of every gamer; threatening to destroy their life and all they stand for through endless add-ons, micro-transactions and in-app purchases. If it’s hyphenated, it’s evil. They’ve paid for the game so why should they have to spare another penny (or cent) to fill the wallets of the game’s producers residing in their ivory towers (looking at you, Notch).
However, what if I was to tell you that without DLC, most games and their developers would cease to operate profitably. At the end of the day, publishers and developers are businesses that rely on sales to survive. DLC is an important source of income for developers following the initial sale of the base game, allowing them to continue their work extending the life-span of games such as with further DLC. As well as further content for the current game, the money can also be used productively through putting it towards financing a new game and allowing the company to function with a healthy cash-flow. Taking EA as an example, DLC or ‘Extra Content’ as the company call it made up for over 45% of digital sales income and over 22% of physical sales for the year 2014. The company went from operating at a loss of $308 million in 2013 to a $142 million profit in 2014 and this was largely due to the recent increase in DLC sales for EA titles such as Battlefield 4, Titanfall (remember that?) and FIFA 15. Not to mention this is one of the largest games producers in the world so its economy of scale means it, more than others, can afford to not take every opportunity to grab cash.
Similarly, the business plans for some games rely on in-game content purchases for all their income. Free to play games such as Dota 2 allow players to download the game for free before then being given players the option afterwards to purchase character sets that change different hero’s appearances. As it is only aesthetic, the content harms nobody who chooses not to buy it, only enhancing the experience for the player who does. Equally, singleplayer expansions that the developer could only finish post-launch in order to extend the life-span of the game, like aesthetic content, is purely for the benefit of the player that buys it in a case of ‘your money, your choice’ with no implication on anyone else. However, this is not the case for all games.
FPSs, particularly Call of Duty and Battlefield, make DLC that creates unfair multiplayer scenarios for players that don’t buy into it. Powerful exclusive weapons that are usable in vanilla content means players prepared to pay for Season Passes and Premium memberships gain an upper hand on those that don’t. This then leads to pressure on players faced with either playing at a disadvantage or giving in to the publishers devious demands and having to cough up. In this respect, DLC is forced onto the player rather than simply being a way of cosmetically improving your experience and instead ruining other people’s.
Even so, there is something even worse. Something terrible. Something worse than Voldemort or UPlay - pre-made DLC. As recently found out by Turtle Rock Studio, pre-made DLC makes people very angry when players found that over $130 of extra content was downloadable on release for Evolve. Locked behind a pay-wall are skins and characters only obtainable through purchase… and all this on a game that the player has already paid a reasonable amount for and who would, therefore, expect the fullest game possible for the large amount of money they’ve already had to pay.
Recently, as CEO of Projekt Red Marcin Iwiński said:
This rare but very much desired announcement by a developer gives me hope that the current system of DLC will change, but at the same time, I understand the needs of both publishers and developers to make money is vital to their survival. Maybe there will come a time when gamers will see the likes of free post-launch content for more games, however, the realist in me can only see the likes of map packs and in-game items becoming an even greater threat to player’s wallets than Steam summer sales and Amiibos.
Source: EA , Project Red
