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

[DethPenguin]

are they saying multiplayer is no longer considered part of games anymore and something extra to pay for?

Lulz. You should be a highschool English teacher.

 

[Pifflestick]

Everyone who tries to justify what 2K did is a FUCKING RETARD. No, there is no fucking grey area here. Either you realize that this is a scam, or your a fucking sucker with no idea about economics. If I pay for a car, I shouldn't be charged extra for the key to the glove box. I even saw someone try to justify it by saying, and I quote, "You wouldn't have made a big deal if there was a Special Edition Bioshock 2 that had the extra content at a higher price. This is essentially the same thing." ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING?!?! There WAS a special edition that HAD extra content, but the extra content was DOWNLOADABLE.

Not only that, but the characters they released had concept art IN THE ART BOOK THAT CAME WITH THE SPECIAL EDITION! Anyone who had paid for the special edition KNEW THEY WERE THERE! This is a SCAM, no ifs ands or buts about it.

Let me explain something about ECONOMICS to you fucking morons. Once you PAY for something it is YOURS. The previous owner has no right to keep a piece locked and then charge you extra when you want to use it. The entirity of what you purchased is YOURS, nobody elses. If I buy a soda, once the transaction is complete the soda is mine. They can't charge me to open it. It is officially MY PROPERTY. Locking a person out of their own property is WRONG. And I'm pretty sure that if someone tried to charge you extra to get the keys to your bathroom after you bought the house that you would take them to court.

And let me point out that I am a BIOSHOCK FANBOY. Have been ever since it first came out. I've got almost all the action figures and I paid for the special edition, yet I think this is the most BLATANT RIP-OFF I have EVER SEEN. Yes, even more blatant than email spam.

But even worse than the blatant rip-off, is the BLATANT STUPIDITY I have seen from you people! You accuse the people who understand why this is wrong of being 'On a high horse' and saying that its 2K's property. ITS NOT 2K'S PROPERTY ONCE YOU BUY IT, ITS YOURS. If you paid full price for it, then you have a right to every bit of data on that disc! This isn't fucking opinion, its fucking fact.

I've never been good at finishing rants so I'm going to drop off here. I hope you people know that you've made me lose my faith in humanity.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

Bullshit. If you want us to have this content, give it to us for free. Don't split the player base over something as trivial as charging money for a 108KB key to the content. As far as I'm concerned that's highway robbery, and I'm honestly disappointed that they haven't learned a fucking thing from Capcom's "DLC" for RE5's multiplayer.

 

[DethPenguin]

Everyone who tries to justify what 2K did is a FUCKING RETARD.

Thank you.

If I pay for a car, I shouldn't be charged extra for the key to the glove box.

You know when you buy a car that it has a glove box. When you bought Bioshock 2, I bet to the highest deity available that you did not know about the extra unlockable content on it. Why? Because it wasn't advertised. It wasn't mentioned. It isn't part of the game, Bioshock 2, that you bought. You bought it for what it was advertised to be, and the unlockable content in no way affected the release price of the game. Now let's say you buy a meal from a fast food place. You know it will have a drink, a burger and fries. But when you get it and look inside, you find an extra pack of fries (that was intentionally placed for the sake of this metaphor). An employee comes up to you and says if you want to eat the extra pack of fries you have to pay for them or they'll take it back to the counter, where you can buy the fries later if you change your mind.

WHAT THE HELL WERE THOSE FASTFOOD PEOPLE THINKING? WE CAN'T STAND FOR THIS! STAND UP LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD

 

[robjbroker]

I find it amazing that so many people would have preferred that they had to pay for the content, then download it rather then pay for it and then unlock it (hint: this one is much quicker). The reality is that the extra content has not been paid for, and you have not incurred any inconvenience by receiving it.

 

[Zeromaeus]

Its on the disk. The disk was bought. Do I own the disk? Yes. Do I have the right to use the content of the disk? Yes. Why then am I not entitled to ALL of the content on the disk? Did I know about the content? No. Do I plan on using the LIVE functions in the near future? No. Should I still be entitled to what I bought? Yeah, or at least so I thought. I don't particularly care about multi-player on BS2 considering I bought it for a strong(ish) single player experience, but I still feel cheated that I don't have access to the totality of the content of the game I bought.
I get that developers, programmers, whoever don't always have the time to put additional content into the disks before its shipped. This was obviously done before it shipped. It was done. Its on the disk. Its there. Can I access it? Nope. Its as though it wasn't there, even though it is, and its there, and I paid for it, and I can't access it.
As a closing I ask you, how far will they go? No. How far will they be allowed to go before they hit that line that they can not cross? Where have we set that line? The line used to be buying the game. Then came expansion packs. Then DLC, but that was free of the original LIVE. Then they started charging for those. Now they charge for on-disk content. Where's the line? Where do we set it? If we don't set it, they will and they'll go as far as they can to make that extra dollar.

 

[Pifflestick]

If I pay for a car, I shouldn't be charged extra for the key to the glove box.

You know when you buy a car that it has a glove box. When you bought Bioshock 2, I bet to the highest deity available that you did not know about the extra unlockable content on it. Why? Because it wasn't advertised. It wasn't mentioned. It isn't part of the game, Bioshock 2, that you bought. You bought it for what it was advertised to be, and the unlockable content in no way affected the release price of the game. Now let's say you buy a meal from a fast food place. You know it will have a drink, a burger and fries. But when you get it and look inside, you find an extra pack of fries (that was intentionally placed for the sake of this metaphor). An employee comes up to you and says if you want to eat the extra pack of fries you have to pay for them or they'll take it back to the counter, where you can buy the fries later if you change your mind.

WHAT THE HELL WERE THOSE FASTFOOD PEOPLE THINKING? WE CAN'T STAND FOR THIS! STAND UP LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD

I knew. Let me repeat what I said. The characters in the new so-called DLC were IN THE ARTBOOK. Right there in print! Hell, they were on two different pages! And the new pistol upgrade was in there too! We KNEW beforehand that these characters were planned, we knew that they had been created before the release of the game.

Not only that, but the code for these characters, along with their audiologs could be found in the code before the DLC was released. Anyone with knowledge of coding and a lot of time could have found these characters BEFORE the DLC was announced.

We KNEW the glovebox was there. And now, we're being charged for the key.

BTW, your example is fucking moronic. Theres no other way to describe it.

 

[7ru7h]

Wow... I've hear people ***** about content that should have been on the disk, but released as DLC, but having a DLC actually on the disk? That is just fucking stupid...

 

[7ru7h]

Everyone who tries to justify what 2K did is a FUCKING RETARD.

Thank you.

If I pay for a car, I shouldn't be charged extra for the key to the glove box.

You know when you buy a car that it has a glove box. When you bought Bioshock 2, I bet to the highest deity available that you did not know about the extra unlockable content on it. Why? Because it wasn't advertised. It wasn't mentioned. It isn't part of the game, Bioshock 2, that you bought. You bought it for what it was advertised to be, and the unlockable content in no way affected the release price of the game. Now let's say you buy a meal from a fast food place. You know it will have a drink, a burger and fries. But when you get it and look inside, you find an extra pack of fries (that was intentionally placed for the sake of this metaphor). An employee comes up to you and says if you want to eat the extra pack of fries you have to pay for them or they'll take it back to the counter, where you can buy the fries later if you change your mind.

WHAT THE HELL WERE THOSE FASTFOOD PEOPLE THINKING? WE CAN'T STAND FOR THIS! STAND UP LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD

Not to destroy your analogy, but the employee would only know about that if the customer said something, and even if they did, once it leaves the counter, they most likely wont take the food back, since it would have to be thrown away.

 

[Der Kommissar]

Thought I'd point out that this was found to be false. The filesize of the Versus mode DLC in RE5 was too big to be a key. Keys, like the one used for Bioshock 2, are usually around 100 KB, or smaller. The Versus mode was megabytes - too big for a key, but about right for a ruleset alteration to the effect of "allow four players, track scores individually, friendly fire on", and a small change to the menu. You might think it's crappy value, sure, but it doesn't have anything to do with the current issue.

Not that it changes anything - I'd just suggest that you find another example (for example, Street Fighter 4's costume packs) if you still want to find trends in on-disc DLC. Minor detail, really.

I can see this leading into a situation where developers will insert bodacious amounts of bogus code to crank up the DLC filesize past +2 megabytes.

All in all, every EULA -argument and quirky metaphor is greatly amusing me; please do keep arguing about it!

 

[Break]

Thought I'd point out that this was found to be false. The filesize of the Versus mode DLC in RE5 was too big to be a key. Keys, like the one used for Bioshock 2, are usually around 100 KB, or smaller. The Versus mode was megabytes - too big for a key, but about right for a ruleset alteration to the effect of "allow four players, track scores individually, friendly fire on", and a small change to the menu. You might think it's crappy value, sure, but it doesn't have anything to do with the current issue.

Not that it changes anything - I'd just suggest that you find another example (for example, Street Fighter 4's costume packs) if you still want to find trends in on-disc DLC. Minor detail, really.

I can see this leading into a situation where developers will insert bodacious amounts of bogus code to crank up the DLC filesize past +2 megabytes.

All in all, every EULA -argument and quirky metaphor is greatly amusing me; please do keep arguing about it!

Well, sure, that might happen. Although, seems kind of unlikely - time spent writing code that does nothing is still time the publisher needs to pay the dev for. I could be wrong, I don't know that much about code - I'd have to find out how easy is it to just ream off a bunch of code that does absolutely nothing, doesn't cause the game to break, but can be written in no time at all. My brother-in-law is a games programmer - I'll have to ask his opinion next time I see him.

Moreover, the filesize thing is just a basic indicator - the type of people who can dig through the game files for strings of hidden code are more than capable of looking over a couple megabyte's worth to see if it's inflated. If they tried this, I don't know how long it would remain a secret.

 

[TelHybrid]

Right, there's yet another game I'm not buying.

Fuck companies who pull this shit, 1st Resident Evil 5, now Bioshock 2.

I really hope this doesn't become a regular trend. I miss the days of gaming when you literally got what you already paid for.

 

[wordsmith]

Question to everyone:

Would you be so pissed off if they hadn't included the data, and had just charged extra for a DLC disk? No, probably not.

I really don't see the difference here: The normal way you pay your £30/£40 whatever for your game, then the extra £5/£10 for your DLC disk, this way you pay your £30/£40 and then pay the extra £5/£10 to access that same data.

 

[Cody211282]

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.

They got a ton of flack for that, and they did it on Street Fighter 4 as well if I remember right. But the thing is that this wont stop until Developers start selling us games rather then letting us rent them and pretending to sell them, on the PC with how DRM works it is almost insulting if you read the terms for playing and installing.

 

[Maze1125]

but what this means is that developers are purposefully keeping pieces out of the original game that were intended to be included in the $60 price tag.

No it doesn't, not in the slightest.

Lots of games have their DLC made at the same time as the main game, but they're still DLC, that was never intended to be part of the main game and would never have even been made if it wasn't for the chance of selling it as DLC.

It's becoming unclear to me why everyone isn't a pirate by now. These developers are really testing the limits of customer patience.

Perhaps because most people prefer to boycott a product by never using it. Not by stealing it.

 

[Der Kommissar]

Thought I'd point out that this was found to be false. The filesize of the Versus mode DLC in RE5 was too big to be a key. Keys, like the one used for Bioshock 2, are usually around 100 KB, or smaller. The Versus mode was megabytes - too big for a key, but about right for a ruleset alteration to the effect of "allow four players, track scores individually, friendly fire on", and a small change to the menu. You might think it's crappy value, sure, but it doesn't have anything to do with the current issue.

Not that it changes anything - I'd just suggest that you find another example (for example, Street Fighter 4's costume packs) if you still want to find trends in on-disc DLC. Minor detail, really.

I can see this leading into a situation where developers will insert bodacious amounts of bogus code to crank up the DLC filesize past +2 megabytes.

All in all, every EULA -argument and quirky metaphor is greatly amusing me; please do keep arguing about it!

Well, sure, that might happen. Although, seems kind of unlikely - time spent writing code that does nothing is still time the publisher needs to pay the dev for. I could be wrong, I don't know that much about code - I'd have to find out how easy is it to just ream off a bunch of code that does absolutely nothing, doesn't cause the game to break, but can be written in no time at all. My brother-in-law is a games programmer - I'll have to ask his opinion next time I see him.

Moreover, the filesize thing is just a basic indicator - the type of people who can dig through the game files for strings of hidden code are more than capable of looking over a couple megabyte's worth to see if it's inflated. If they tried this, I don't know how long it would remain a secret.

As simple as copy+pasting text. I just made a 5mb file with the letter "a". Veiling it as code is not that hard either, and you can put everything into commentary sections, which will not show anywhere else than in the raw code.

Alas it certainly is a mere basic indicator, but things might go this way. It'll take people some time before they realize to check to code for legitimacy.

 

[The Thief]

Eh. I'm not really bugged by it, for three special reasons.

First of all, it's multiplayer DLC, so I couldn't care less about that stuff (at least for the PC version, which is the one I happen to have).

Secondly, it's Bioshock 2, which I have purchased and left unbeaten due to better games constantly interrupting me. Once I finish the main game I'll start fretting over bonus content.

Thirdly, it's not all that different from regular DLC, other than it incontestably being intentionally left out of the game. Devious, yes, but not unfair.