Bioshock 2 DLC was already on the retail disc, gamers find

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I find it funny that content you'd be happy to pay for otherwise is suddenly this huge issue just because you learned that the data is already packaged on the disc. Bottom line is this: Do you want access to the new content? If yes, then you have to pay for it. If no, then it doesn't effect you either way.

I can't find the article (mostly because I can't remember which it was from), but I read recently about an analogy referring to processors. A company had to decide between making high-end processors for the hardcore crowd and low-end processors for the everyday people. They couldn't have two factories making two different types of cards because it just wasn't feasible. The solution? They produced high-end processors, then set aside roughly half of their product and crippled the processors to run at a lower speed. It sounds silly, but it was a solution that allowed them to produce processors and sell to both crowds while only needing one production line.

By your logic, the company is doing a miss-service to the everyday crowd by selling them what was once a high-speed processor, and yet they're happy with their product because they were able to get a processor that did what they needed it to do at a price they wanted. Meanwhile you're in here bitching about wanting a high-end processor at the low-end price just because they both came off the same production line.

 

[himemiya1650]

oh you mean JUST LIKE ANY OTHER GAME??? Looking at RE5.....

 

[Doctor VonSexMachine]

It's ridiculous how dlc is getting to be the way it is. Next thing you know we will be paying for other half of full games where we play it up to a point and it stops like those old arcade games and says please insert another quarter. I hate how its gone.

Do you have any idea how silly you sound?
Scenario 1: You buy a game and know that there will be a complete game available to you. You also know that there will be extra content available at additional cost. You can restart as much as you want, replay as much as you want.

Scenario 2: You play a game with the knowledge that when you fail to meet certain objectives, you will be asked to pay to continue play. If you fail to meet these objectives, the entire game is not available to you without further cost. In addition, there is a cost at each instance of game play.

People don't seem to understand that you are paying for the right to use data, and not (mostly) for the disk itself. Try reading one of those EULAs you hit "ok" to all the time.

 

[Nazulu]

Hold on, I can't completely rap my head around this. Are you saying that there is already some extra bits n' pieces on the disc you have to pay for again? Or are you saying that there is this thing that stops you from downloading DLC till you pay extra for it?

Also does this DLC become essential to play online? Does it stop updates?

 

[Nazulu]

Hold on, I can't completely rap my head around this. Are you saying that there is already some extra bits n' pieces on the disc you have to pay for again? Or are you saying that there is this thing that stops you from downloading DLC till you pay extra for it?

Also does this DLC become essential to play online? Does it stop updates?

The content is already on the disc.

This crap doesn't surprise me at all. Anyone with half a brain could have seen this shit coming for years.

Then that's ridiculous.

 

[Nurb]

There is no 'high horse' about expecting companies not to be a dick and locking out part of what's on a disc people already paid full price for. People are also bitter because they remember when little bits of DLC used to be free rewards to loyal paying customers of a developer between expansions and sequels, now they're just viewed as suckers.

It's "well it's our game, and if you don't like what we do, screw off" when it comes to legitimate complaints and criticm lately, but when their game doesn't sell well and/or they piss off enough people it's "Baaaww, shrinking market, PC dying, etc"

Then they'll learn sooner or later, or go out of business. But if they get paid enough as to where it isn't a real concern, then they won't do anything about it. And if that happens, then obviously you're a minority here, and people tend to want to make money off the majority. There's simply more there to be made.

It just confuses me that, by your reckoning, if they had waited and made everyone download a patch for this a month later, you'd apparently be a-okay with it. It makes no sense. You may as well have the option now, and you may as well not have to download something off the bat for it.

yes, a patch would have been fine because they haven't started charging for THOSE quite yet.

They may have every right to make people pay extra to have access to ALL the information on a purchased disc, but paying customers have every right to complain about how they're conducting their business.

 

[Flight]

That's pretty ridiculous of them. Hopefully, they'll learn their lesson and not bother with such a thing in the future.

 

[The Buck Stops Here]

I don't possible see how including content already on the disc counts as "DLC". That's like an analogy of an IVF child not being an actual human child because they're not grown in the uterus. I mean, if they say "hey, you have to pay to access this extra content", just out of the blue, I'd be fine with it, but passing it off as DLC is just silly when you're really paying for the data you've already got on the disc.

I'll be avoiding Bioshock 2, though. If that's the level of bullshit they're willing to pull, it can only go down from here.

 

[Nurb]

Hold on, I can't completely rap my head around this. Are you saying that there is already some extra bits n' pieces on the disc you have to pay for again? Or are you saying that there is this thing that stops you from downloading DLC till you pay extra for it?

Also does this DLC become essential to play online? Does it stop updates?

The content is already on the disc.



This crap doesn't surprise me at all. Anyone with half a brain could have seen this shit coming for years.

I remember when Xbox LIVE first came out at a time when all the DLC was free because we paid for the system, game and service, and people said I was being pessimistic when I said MS would start charging for everything once they got enough people online, and now game discs have lockouts on content, Dedicated servers are being taken away which makes match sizes in games take a step backwards, and non-mmo games are going to start going subscription if Activision goes through with their intentions.

Gaming is sucking more and more as the corporate execs and shareholders are given the decision making power.

 

[Thunderhorse31]

Capcom did the same thing with Resi 5 as I recall.

Apparently there weren't enough people calling them on it to make it clear that this shit will not fly.

My friends and I stopped playing RE5 the second they tried to pull that shit. Granted, the game itself was overrated, but still, I'm glad I could support the second-hand market and screw Capcom out of another $60. Methinks I'll wait to grab Bioshock 2 when they re-release it with all of the content unlocked.

 

[Crystal Cuckoo]

While I agree with all Maze1125 has said, I still find it annoying that I should have to pay for something the developers should've actually included in the initial game.

But then again, that just delves into the whole "We shouldn't have to pay for DLC" argument, which I am not getting into now.

 

[Sprogus]

I don't mind that there is content locked away on the disc. I do mind that we are paying to unlock it. Couldn't they have made it that you unlock it by playing the single player or something? You know, like in the good old days.

 

[squid5580]

I would think paying for the data and the disc it's on would grant someone the right to use it.

You'd think wrong then.

No. People paid FULL PRICE for the disc, by any average person's viewpoint, what's on it is theirs.

By the average person's view point, Quantum Mechanics is nonsensical rubbish.
The average person rarely has the most accurate or intelligent point of view.

Think about it, they put extra work into keeping people locked out from what's on the disc! It's bullshit.

Yep, they put extra work in to gain extra money, sounds like capitalism to me.

Did you even think about what you just said? By that logic I could drop 60 bucks on a game. Get it home then get a message saying if you want to play it you need to buy this code.

If that happened without a disclaimer on the box, then they could be sued for deceiving their customers, that is not the case with this DLC.

When you buy a game, you are buying the rights to play it. The data on the disc is irrelevant. If you can play the game, you got what you paid for. You bought the rights to Bioshock 2, you got to play Bioshock 2, you got what you paid for. If you want the rights to use the DLC, you can pay for that too or, if you want, you can choose not to. The physical location of the data is irrelevant.

If you bought a game that didn't work without an extra code, you would have not got what you paid for, which would be illegal.

Hey you are right. They would have to let you play. So they give you the opening, the tutorial and jump straight to the end. You want the rest? Then you are paying. Unless of course they say on the box X many hours then well then they can't pull that.

It is a very dangerous slope we are on here. And as I told a friend of mine during the same discussion we are the ones who decide the future. DLC and all this jazz is pretty new in this context (not like the expansion packs of yesteryears). If we tell them that ya its fine to invest manhours into a make work project to nickel and dime us later (cuz that is exactly what this is) then they will continue to do so. And it will only get worse. Our decisions now are going to effect not only us but future generations of gamers.

And I still have yet to hear how this locked content would or could have split the userbase being available to all right out of the box. At least with Capcom they came out and said that we locked it like this because we need to cover the cost of server maintenence. Which is almost an acceptable reason except that is why I pay MS 60 bucks a year for (PS3 owners should have had to pay because they don't pay for that). Give me a reason though. A valid reason as to why this was locked. Other than the obvious greed. That bothers me so much more than them actually locking it. And that is why I will not buy any of there games now. Thank goodness for renting.

 

[jasoncyrus]

Lol i'm surprised there isnt a keygen for this already...Pirates must be too busy taking Ubisoft games apart to have noticed yet.

EDIT: A better marketting plan for them would be an "Unlock early by paying" microtransaction system. Where you normally ge tit by completing the game on hard mode or something, but can pay cash to get it right away if you cant be bothered.

 

[icaritos]

There is no excuse for what they have done. None whatsoever

This is not to keep the community united and its an even more bastardized form of day one DLC. I mean hell even dragon age offered the DLC to those who bought the game for free (Shale) but you now have to PAY for it.

To those who are defending this move do you even know what that means? You are now officially paying five more bucks for not pirating the goddamn game. Give me extra content for buying the game, dont screw me over with bullshit anti-pirate crap.

God im so pissed i feel like punching something, i assume that when you buy a cupcake you have the right to eat it, or do i have to pay the supermarket to unlock frosting?

 

[Nurb]

I just realized, this isn't technicly DLC because you're not downloading the content...

what do you call data on the game disc you purchase that you can't access without fishing out your wallet again?

Also, if this is the multiplayer you're paying to access, are they saying multiplayer is no longer considered part of games anymore and something extra to pay for?

 

[shadow skill]

This is like buying a book and then having to buy a special pair of glasses to be able to see the words printed on the page. It defeats the purpose of actually buying the product in the first place because you don't actually buy the product until you buy the glasses. If someone stole your Bioshock 2 disc you could report it as stolen, and if you are lucky law enforcement would return your disc, your property to you. The difference between this shit and Shareware is that Shareware actually tells you about the locked functionality up front. This is an outright scam.

Ahh, the quote to end all quotes

I am always struck by exactly how ignorant many gamers are of how game or software development actually works. Let me try to explain this for you all:

First, any studio-developed game has a set time limit and budget for development. This should be common sense. All of the time that artists, writers, voice actors, programmers, and QA testers spend working on content is time that they are paid for.

Because of this, there is a set amount of content that can be included in a retail game (which pretty much has a fixed price). This is typically decided early on, and as the game development progresses things are added and removed depending on the difficulties the developer encounters. At each point, a decision is made as to whether X feature is important enough to increase the time/cost of the game development - if it's not, it can get cut from the game. Many of these features might be very cool, and developers can be sad to see them cut, but this happens with every game.

At some point in the development process, the designers have to stop adding new features and content. At this point, the programmers and QA become very busy testing, optimizing, and porting content. In the past, this is the stage where most of the writers, designers, and artists either get fired or get moved to another game.

Instead of firing the content creators, many newer games are deciding to instead have them make more content, to be tested and released separately from the game as DLC. This does not mean that the time that is used to create this is free, or that it is a part of the retail game. In some cases, the designers go back to stuff that was cut from the original game and rework it and fix the problems, because they really didn't want to see it removed in the first place.

While this is happening, the final "gold" version of the game is created. This is the version that first needs to pass the console manufacturers' certifications, and then need to be sent to manufacturing. This can take several weeks. During this time, the programmers and QA can test the DLC content that the rest of the team had been working on. Because they're working off the final version of the game now, and this is just extra content, this process goes a lot faster. It is easily possible that digital content can be tested and ready to be released before the retail versions of the game are even done being manufactured.

But all this time isn't 'free' - the assumption that the people working on this content would otherwise be being paid to add things to the retail game is just stupid. That game development time and budget has already been spent - they would either be working on something else entirely, or looking for a new job.

To create this new stuff, it has to be paid for somehow. For The Stone Prisoner, it's being paid for to see if it helps make up for used game sales - a particular problem for a mostly-linear story-based RPG. The Warden's Keep content, on the other hand, is a marketing promotion to sell the more expensive digital collector's edition (sans cloth map). If you aren't 'paying' for the content in one of those two ways, then you should expect to pay for it directly.

This is no different than Day 1 DLC. We got over that, can we get over this as well?

The content was already on the discs sold to people, how exactly is this the same as day 1 DLC that isn't necessarily on the discs people buy when the game launches?