Legal Opinion: Why DLC is the Future of Gaming

[joshua_wilding]

DLCs are not a solution to video game piracy on the PC as they can be cracked just as easily as the game itself, if not easier in some cases. How can DLCs protect games from piracy if they suffer from the same problems as the games themselves?

[Marcus Dunn]

Whether you like it or hate it, DLC is the future and it's not going anywhere unfortunately.

[Jez]

My main point of contention with this article is that DLC is cheap. Sure it's cheap if it's a one-off impulse buy, like having a single drink at the closest bar even though you know it's overpriced.

But the problem is that DLC is not a one-off purchase. Large numbers of commercial titles in every genre are using DLC, often deliberately sequestering content from the main development cycle to be launched as day one DLC.

I see the rise of DLC as a business model as a response to the rising development cost of AAA titles. In a nutshell: gammes are getting more expensive to produce and there's a limit both to how high they can set the RRP and how much merch they can cram into umpteen different 'special' editions to reclaim that lost profit margin.

So on the face of it, DLC seems like a logical solution: it's a way to capitalise on all the money they've spent on developing the core game, selling a small amount of extra content in way that's much more profitable for publishers in relative terms.

However, a lot of DLC (especially multiplayer DLC) fractures the community by creating barriers that prevent people from playing together, which is especially devastating for smaller gaming communities like the ones in Australia.

In short, instead of trying to recoup lost profit margin through the twin price gouging of a higher RRP and charging 15 dollars for 2-3 new maps and a few recycled ones, I think more publishers should follow the Steam model. Essentially they should be lowering the price of games to create better value for money, and following that up with optional/cosmetic paid content that doesn't split communities. One only has to look at Valve's profit:employee ratio to see that there are other ways forward apart from the current paradigm game at $59.95 USD and DLC (that features a tiny fraction of the content/development cost of the game itself) at $14.95.

[Tim Colwill]

DLC has created these problems in the first place.

DLC has created restrictive DRM?
DLC has created unfair regional pricing?
DLC has created **** console ports?

These are the main problems facing gaming at the moment, and I'm not really sure that DLC has created any of them?

DLC, properly implemented to sell reasonable content at a reasonable price, is a great way of dealing with the scarcity problem as outlined in the article.

Also, phrases like "anybody with a clue knows X" are pretty unhelpful. Thanks for back-handedly implying that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid!

[Krogan]

If your game is based on a multiplayer experience (doesn't matter if its an mmo, rts, fps or whatever) there is really no excuse for not going free to play with optional dlc as your model. This is without a doubt the future of MP gaming as the most important thing is to make it possible for a group of 5 friends to all play together without having the 1 or 2 friends that aren't able to afford the game. Instead you offer a solid and fully functional game for free with extras as DLC and that DLC can be just about anything. I am not a big fan of buying power and much prefer buying diversity but the most important thing is that you are all able to play together and that the DLC is priced reasonably, map pack DLC is also just stupid, fragmenting your player base should NEVER be done.

As for single player games I really don't like DLC at all, I am completionist and I want to experience everything a game has to offer or I don't bother. This happened with ME3 for me so I didn't end up buying it and to this date Civ5 is the only SP DLC I have ever bought. Maybe its because I come from an old school PC background but for me SP games (esp rts) should have expansions not DLC, I general just hate fragmented content for SP games and I think it really hurts when developers have to take in to consideration that you may have dlc a but not b so c can't build on either. I also think all expansions for SP games should BUILD on the original game and never EVER force you to start over (yeah go die in a fire Bioware with your horrible wardens keep dlc). I'll end this with a shout out to the masters of this, Blizzard, and their amazing game Sc2 and how they have released 0 DLC.

[lord-ezekiel]

I am so sick of this ceaseless bashing of the horse armour DLC.
It made your horse tougher to kill, and looked cool.

I'm sure i could look on xbox live quickly and give you a list of hundreds if not THOUSANDS of DLC items that offer you substantially LESS than that for MORE money.

[psychofruiterer]

As for single player games I really don't like DLC at all, I am completionist and I want to experience everything a game has to offer

This.
With the added comment of the first time playthrough.

With how many games are out there, i rarely, if ever go back to a game months after i have finished the first playthrough.
I would rather have a sequel or a proper expansion pack with 6-8 hours of new gameplay that continues the main story.
DLC that just adds side stuff doesn't appeal to me at all, since i already know how it turns out in the end if i have finished my playthrough.

I like to get my game on, but in a nice big juicy chunk of story, complete it and move on, DLC just can't compete with a proper expansion or sequel.

[Marius]

Thanks for the comments everyone. Now to respond...

Why not? The best expansion to a game I've ever played was Half Life: Opposing Force. It had a cool embossed front cover, a neat manual including stuff like Murphy's Combat Laws, a bunch of new weapons which distinguished it from just another campaign, and it was of a good length. Brood War, Yuri's Revenge, there are plenty of full expansions out there, but I've not see the same kind of product with DLC that's given me as much of an experience as a larger (but more costly) expansion pack.

All those examples are decades old. The reason that expacs aren't going to return on that magnitude is that they just don't make enough money. If they did, we'd see many more companies than currently release them... which is almost none. The companies that do release them only do so for entrenched titles with a large fanbase, like StarCraft 2 and Total War.

So to hope for an expansion pack for your favourite game is a pipe dream, unless it's StarCraft. DLC however is more profitable on a smaller production scale, so can cater to a much wider array of gaming tastes.

Also... where is Half Life 2 Episode 3?

DLCs are not a solution to video game piracy on the PC as they can be cracked just as easily as the game itself, if not easier in some cases. How can DLCs protect games from piracy if they suffer from the same problems as the games themselves?

The piracy problem with games and expacs is that if companies bank on selling fewer units of higher priced packs, then they have to worry much more about DRM and piracy. Each pirated game or xpac reduces their profits by a lot more than each pirated DLC.

Piracy happens, in part, because people want convenience. Lots of smaller purchases going straight to convenience buying makes products a lot more robust against piracy.

That DLC is more robust against piracy is shown by just how profitable it is for some companies. While they complain about pirated games, they don't really complain about selling millions of DLC packs.

What advantages for consumers does DLC offer over expansion packs?

The main advantage is that DLC is available for more games. The profit margins for xpacs just aren't there anymore apart from a few games. So unless you're a StarCraft 2 player, you might be waiting a rather long time for an xpac for your favourite game. And given Blizzard's production model, you'll probably be waiting forever for Heart of the Swarm anyway. I expect it to debut in 2020.

I also covered this in the article.

It’s readily available: anyone with an internet connection can download it. It’s cheap: DLC packs are priced at around $10. It’s responsive: DLC is available soon after release. It’s modular: DLC allows you to pick and choose what you want in your expansion.

Of note here is that Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas didn't get expansion packs. Neither did Borderlands. Instead, they released DLC at regular intervals. And taken together, all the DLC is about the length of an expansion pack for roughly the same price.

So instead of the DLC model giving you this content every few months or so, the xpac model would have you wait for a year or two after you've forgotten about the game, then buy it all, including the parts you had no interest in. That comparison illustrates why DLC can be better than expansion packs.

My main point of contention with this article is that DLC is cheap. Sure it's cheap if it's a one-off impulse buy, like having a single drink at the closest bar even though you know it's overpriced.

But the problem is that DLC is not a one-off purchase. Large numbers of commercial titles in every genre are using DLC, often deliberately sequestering content from the main development cycle to be launched as day one DLC.

To be fair I did specifically say that was a bad thing.

DLC must be worth the money. Things like all the Fallout DLC, all the Borderlands DLC, and some of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age DLC like Leliana's Song are definitely worth the money.

It seems to me that the main source of contention people have with DLC is the bad DLC. But this can't be used as examples to chastise all DLC, when there are some very good DLC packs out there worth the money. It's this 'good DLC' that is the future of gaming.

[TRB]

I think the article slightly misses the point.

I really don't think anyone has a problem with DLC in and of itself.
In days gone by they were called 'expansion packs', EQ1 had like 18 of them.
So DLC isn't "the future" as something 'new' so much as its already the past and present and will just continue.

DLC only really causes problems when its day 1 DLC that unlocks content that was previously supposed to be in the core game or unlocks content that really is critical to the core game, since if either of those are the case then it should have been in the core game on day 1.

but adding to the core game a month down the track I don't really see anyone complaining about.

the only other time I've been annoyed by DLC is when something like the ability to mod a game or make new maps with a map editor or something is removed either from an existing game or from the next instalment of a game series so that studios can charge money for content that was previously made free by the public.


What I dislike far more then DLC is the practise of releasing a game that is not 'feature complete' or is still buggy/unstable or in some other way incomplete but they still charge full price for it and either take for ever to patch their problems or just give up on fixing it, going on to release the next game or add-on pack or whatever.
TW: shogun 2 is a good example, I still haven't got past turn 9 in a campaign before it starts crashing when you push end turn, yet the new add-on is out.

[Gamer87]

Only DLC i've bought is the fallout 3 and New Vegas ones... Every other game I have that has DLC just looks like utter trash... Oh look a new gun? Oh look a new skin... Oh look a new map... What ever happened to the days where they just did this **** because they enjoyed making games?

[vcatkiller]

I think Borderlands did DLC pretty well. It actually added a few hours of gameplay for a pretty damn good price. Except Mad Moxxy's Underdome, never did get into that much...

[frosty-theaussie]

Fallout 3/New Vegas had some pretty neat DLC. I mean, the Gun Runner's Arsenal and Courier's Stash were kind of lame but the other pieces expanded on the story nicely.

[DoHo_]

I don't like DLC. I don't like the idea of it. I think extra content should be free unless it's a substantial addition. Day-1 stuff should only ever be free because it's already there... why are we paying extra for it? What if an entire game was made up of DLC? Weapons, armour/items, MP maps, campaign maps etc and you had to pay for each individual part of a game at DLC prices. My point with that is that DLC price is proportionally much higher than the rest of the game but doesn't offer nearly as much content/substance.

Expansion packs used to offer about half the content of the original game for about half the price. The only "good" DLC I've seen, if we exclude Team Fortress 2, is GTAIV's Episodes From Liberty City which was labeled DLC because of its nature, but in reality were stand-alone expansion packs.

[Marius]

What if an entire game was made up of DLC? Weapons, armour/items, MP maps, campaign maps etc and you had to pay for each individual part of a game at DLC prices.

Multiplayer F2P games based on that model are very successful.

All a multiplayer F2P game, is, really, is a core game hub surrounded by DLC.

[vcatkiller]

What if an entire game was made up of DLC? Weapons, armour/items, MP maps, campaign maps etc and you had to pay for each individual part of a game at DLC prices. My point with that is that DLC price is proportionally much higher than the rest of the game but doesn't offer nearly as much content/substance.

Actually...that could kind of work. Stick with me here...imagine if you could download a game completely free? There's enough gameplay there to keep the average person going for a while, both single player and multiplayer. Perhaps there's enough single player content to leave dangling questions and interest to keep playing. Then you release DLC packs with dozens of extra weapons, extra locations and story line exposition. No I'm not talking $20 for a nice hat, a small map the size of a shoe box and a weapon that's a slight reskin of an old one, but substantial stuff that will keep paying customers coming back for weeks. In fact, you could almost make episodic content work this way, with each new DLC being the next chapter.

If done properly it could keep a business afloat for quite a while. I could also see it becoming a train wreck if done wrong, but it pays to think positively. I don't know of any, but I bet there's a "Freemium" game out there that does this already...