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[Fady K]

One of the worst trends in the gaming industry - the lack of proper pricing on DLCs. Not only are they poorly priced IMO, they are also barely on sale or discounted.

Case in point - my wife just finished Assassin's Creed III and I was looking forward to picking up the DLC (Tyranny of George Washington costs a whopping $28 and the other single player missions cost a total of $10 across two pieces of DLC). Yet the game itself is normally priced $20. How could a full game be cheaper than its' DLC that is, at best, a few hours long?

Another case - I'm playing through Mass Effect 3 at the moment (bought the collector's edition back then) and I was shocked at the amount I had to pay for the overall single player DLC cost me a total of $50!!! That's almost the price of a brand new game :/!

True, they are optional, but having played through plenty of them they don't always feel like they are. With Mass Effect 3 I felt like the DLC I played so far (From Ashes, Leviathan and Omega) are very pivotal to the plot and experience.

It is one of the worst trends in the gaming industry IMO that many gaming publishers get away with time and time again. On top of the pricing problem, you can't tell if the developer intentionally creates content for DLC rather than include them in the main game. It is deceptive and easy to get away with, especially when it comes out on the SAME DAY as the game's release (From Ashes DLC, $10). With the prices of games these days it is a total joke in my opinion.

On the other side of the hill, I'd like to tip my hat off to a couple of developer who makes EXCELLENT use of DLC.

1) 2K marin for their excellent Minerva's Den DLC for Bioshock 2 which came out a whole 6 months later and provided 5 hours of excellent plot and entertainment that improves the overall Bioshock 2 package.

2) Red Barrels for their incredible DLC for Outlast titled Whistleblower which continues and ends the plot in a very satisfying manner, provides a lot of new content, areas, plot and is downright more disturbing AND scarier than the original. This piece of DLC came out 8 months after the PC release.

 

[dex3108]

On Steam sale Dishonored GOTY was 8 euros i think and only SP DLCs were 10 euros. They are doing this because they can.

 

[Crimsonclaw111]

On Steam sale Dishonored GOTY was 8 euros i think and only SP DLCs were 10 euros. They are doing this because they can.

Bethesda doesn't like to give early adopters breaks.

 

[bebop242]

DLC is usually put up in its respective store and outside of a rare sale, is forgotten about. I agree they need to reduce the prices along with the main game.

GOTY editions are the way to go until that happens.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Map packs for Call of Duty 2 are still full price.

Nuff said.

 

[Squire]

As the base game gets cheaper the DLC should to? There's no reason for this occur.

I can get Rock Band 2 for probably $10 right now. What of the song library? If I follow your logic, that all may as well be free!

No offense, it just sounds like you're sort of a penny pincher, OP. To put it lightly.

Pay the cost for the content or don't.

 

[Relique]

Yeah it is an extremely frustrating trend. Often times the DLC can be even better than the main game. I think that a good rule of thumb is that unless a game has a GOTY edition, the DLC will pretty much stay at full price. It's a shame.

I am a huge Mass Effect fan and thought that "From Ashes" was absolutely essential to the story. After hearing all the praise for Citadel DLC it sucks that I will likely never play it due to the price.

 

[Mitama]

As the base game gets cheaper the DLC should to? There's no reason for this occur.

I can get Rock Band 2 for probably $10 right now. What of the song library? If I follow your logic, that all may as well be free!

No offense, it just sounds like you're sort of a penny pincher, OP. To put it lightly.

Pay the cost for the content or don't.

Are you saying DLC is worth more than the actual game? Why shouldn't it be discounted?

 

[OrlanisWorks]

It's why I never ever have picked up DLC besides a fifty cent homie pack for Saints Row 4. Shit is overpriced and they never seem to get lowered over time. Its awful since in ten or twenty years, some DLC may be totally unobtainable.

 

[Fady K]

As the base game gets cheaper the DLC should to? There's no reason for this occur.

I can get Rock Band 2 for probably $10 right now. What of the song library? If I follow your logic, that all may as well be free!

No offense, it just sounds like you're sort of a penny pincher, OP. To put it lightly.

Pay the cost for the content or don't.

The DLC doesn't HAVE to get cheaper but it sure as heck would be nice if the developers give a discount on the DLC for a 2+ year old game.

Rock Band 2 is definitely not a good comparison because that boils down to your taste in music and the songs you want to buy. Single player DLC for a story heavy game is not really much of a choice to ignore.

Penny pincher? I spent $70 on Mass Effect 3 CE and nearly $40 on the SP DLC and I'm a penny pincher? Ok. Sorry for feeling bothered at spending nearly the price of a full game just for some story-based DLCs.

Saying pay the cost or don't is a poor way of looking at it and can limit you to applying that logic to every game and every DLC. Developers might as well throw away any notion of sales/discounts in this case.

 

[mclem]

Massive rapid price drops happen - in part - because physical stores are looking to sell off unsold stock and continually trying to compete with the preowned option.

In the pure-digital space, there's no downward pressure from that. There are still other reasons to discount, but that's a huge one that's no longer relevant.

 

[bebop242]

Massive rapid price drops happen - in part - because physical stores are looking to sell off unsold stock and continually trying to compete with the preowned option.

In the pure-digital space, there's no downward pressure from that. There are still other reasons to discount, but that's a huge one that's no longer relevant.

Yep, it certainly fuels concern about an all digital future.

 

[jediyoshi]

Are you saying DLC is worth more than the actual game? Why shouldn't it be discounted?

He can be saying either, it's an arbitrary imagined rule either way. Who defines value? Why should it be discounted? Because you want things cheaper? Why stop at just slightly cheaper than the base game?

 

[Kinyou]

Yeah it doesn't really make any sense. Publishers seem to be using dlc as sort of a loophole because they're digital only and so they don't have to compete with stores and the used market. There should be a more natural price decline but neither MS or Sony are probably willing to enforce that.

 

[Mr. Enigma]

I totally loved Bungie's model with Halo 2's DLC: make it free after 2 months. Exactly how it should be with everything.

I remember they also did this with Halo 3's first map pack, but never did it again. They didn't sound like they wanted to do that and were forced by Microsoft.

I remember they originally promised Halo 2's DLC would be free but MS said no to that.

 

[JaseC]

I totally loved Bungie's model with Halo 2's DLC: make it free after 2 months. Exactly how it should be with everything.

Valve and CDPR do it better still, which is release DLC for free from the off so as to reward existing customers and make the product more enticing to those on the fence.

I remember they originally promised Halo 2's DLC would be free but MS said no to that.

Sounds familiar.

 

[Fady K]

Yeah it is an extremely frustrating trend. Often times the DLC can be even better than the main game. I think that a good rule of thumb is that unless a game has a GOTY edition, the DLC will pretty much stay at full price. It's a shame.

I am a huge Mass Effect fan and thought that "From Ashes" was absolutely essential to the story. After hearing all the praise for Citadel DLC it sucks that I will likely never play it due to the price.

Agreed!! Can't believe Bioware would allow such a pivotal piece of DLC to be "optional" and "paid for". And it came out on the same day!

I totally loved Bungie's model with Halo 2's DLC: make it free after 2 months. Exactly how it should be with everything.

I remember they also did this with Halo 3's first map pack, but never did it again. They didn't sound like they wanted to do that and were forced by Microsoft.

I remember they originally promised Halo 2's DLC would be free but MS said no to that.

Bungie did that? That is incredible.

 

[AkIRA_22]

Illogical like a fox! Seriously its because they like money... The publisher the developers. You.

 

[Bluth54]

I totally loved Bungie's model with Halo 2's DLC: make it free after 2 months. Exactly how it should be with everything.

I'll take Valve's model where all maps are free from day one. We're still geatting new free maps in TF2 after nearly 7 years.

 

[Stone Ocean]

Bethesda doesn't like to give early adopters breaks.

Buying the Legendary edition of Skyrim is cheaper than buying all the DLC for my base game. Because fuck logic.

 

[7DollarHagane]

Activision is the same way with their old call of duty games, except they go on an even lesser discount.

I guess it makes sense for them because they figure anyone who would buy the DLC is hooked on the game already.

I know it worked on me because i spent like $50 on Black Ops 1 and the DLC during a steam sale. Worth it for that game though. Best call of duty of all time.

I remember getting AC3 plus the DLC for like $13 through amazon once though.

 

[SaucyJack]

Ubisoft seem to be particularly bad at this. Assassin's Creed DLC has always been overpriced, but at least it's on sale sometimes. Assassin's Creed Revelations DLC is as stupidly priced as AC III.

SImilarly, Prince of Persia Forgotten Sands can be picked up for no more than £5 - as it should be for such an old game - but the Epilogue DLC is £8 and never on sale.

Makes no sense.

EDIT: My error, Epilogue belongs to the 2008 PoP game (not Forgotten Sands) - which you can normally pick up for £2 used.

 

[Tertullian]

This is the new pricing model. Dupe people into coming through the door with a low up-front price during a Steam sale, then bilk them for all they're worth on DLCs that should be part of the core experience. And they're only going to stop if we change our buying habits to make them stop.

 

[Omega]

as you pointed out, same problem with mass effect. it's almost never discounted, at least on PC. The DLC for both of those games would cost me $80. i got the entire trilogy for $20

only reason i was able to play those DLCs is because there's always free XBL giveaways, so I had a bunch saved up and spent it on the dlc.

 

[perfectsil]

on Steam when the base game is on sale the DLCs are usually off by the same %, DLCs on consoles seem to be rarely on sale.

this is what I paid for on Steam last october

Assassin's Creed 3 Standard Edition 11.99 USD
Assassin's Creed III - Season Pass 10.19 USD

 

[L~A]

Yup, that's really annoying me. I'd certainly check out the DLC stuff for AC3, but 10€ per pack? No friggin' way, sorry.

During the Christmas sale, the DLC were actually more expensive than the game itself. I mean, each piece of DLC, not all of them together.

Ridiculous.

 

[Rezae]

In a lot of cases the main game being extremely discounted is nothing more than a gateway to hopefully make more money off of you later with DLC, sort of like free or near-free mobile games where the entry barrier is nearly non-existent but they can profit greatly off people that want more.

As for GOTY editions being cheaper than DLC packages... I dunno. Likely a case of the DLC not being a focal point during the big sales, as someone else has mentioned.

 

[mitx]

I'm still waiting for my Mass Effect 3 DLC price to drop...

 

[Leafhopper]

DLC rarely if ever drops price, sometimes there is DLC sales. (God that is stupid to even say.)

Seems like DLC comes out and stays at a price or it comes out free. With the occasional sale, once in a blue moon on consoles.

 

[border]

You realize that a lot of times games are discounted specifically because they want to drive DLC sales, right?

It's basically the same as the Free 2 Play model, though I suppose it's a bit like the razor & blades model that console manufacturers have always used. Sell you something dirt cheap, then gouge you on the required accessories.

This is particularly common with multiplayer games. They can give you a deeply discounted copy because they know you will buy add-ons and map packs for the multiplayer and those are very high-margin purchases. It's not exactly a coincedence that Super Street Fighter IV was free a month before they started selling the Ultra Street Fighter IV DLC. Sales of Halo 3 maps probably went through the roof when Halo 3 was a free game.

 

[matrixman92]

its like kingdoms of amalur. It was on sale the other day for 7 dollars on the xbl marketplace i think. The two dlc's are 9.99 each

 

[yGray]

Some DLC Is worth the price.

The Dishonored DLC was a great addition and $10 every few months for new story content is fine with me.

It depends on the DLC and the quality obviously. Prince of Persia charged extra money just to end the main story. That's not cool.


As far as the Alien Isolation DLC goes, I'm fine with that. They're selling a game about Amanda Ripley, not the original Ripley. That is literally bonus content, plus it's free with a preorder. In that case, they want people to purchase the game at it's intended price, not a huge discount they're forced to make because of poor sales.

 

[UnluckyKate]

On Steam sale Dishonored GOTY was 8 euros i think and only SP DLCs were 10 euros. They are doing this because they can.

To buy the DLC, I bought the GOTY edition. It was cheaper.
So to buy 2 Sp DLC, I bought :
- main game again (useless)
- pre order packs dlc (don't care)
- Sp dlc City Trials (don't care)
- SP DLC 1
- SP DLC 2

everything is cheaper than just SP DLC 1 and DLC 2

 

[chickdigger802]

luckily, you really aren't missing much with the dlc.

that washington going evil had such potential too

 

[CosmicQueso]

If DLC experienced sales spikes when the prices are decreased during promotional periods then you'll see lower prices and more sales.

But if DLC sales don't change much when the price is dropped, why would the price drop?

If they can sell 100 downloads at $30, or 120 downloads at $20, why the heck would they drop the price?

 

[Lone_Prodigy]

Printer ink costs more than the printer itself.

 

[Duster]

I wonder why you don't hear companies complaining about the second-hand market and/or using online passes much these days...

 

[Moosehole]

Digital future, brah! It's all the rage!

 

[PHOENIXZERO]

Printer ink costs more than the printer itself.

And razor blades end up costing more than the razor, because games are sold as loss leaders.

 

[Hamster Plugin]

AC3 DLC was on sale for €12 on EU PSN a couple of months ago and I got it from there. It's pretty annoying that the DLC is not linked to a game's sale like Steam seems to have - at that time only the season pass was on sale but not the game itself.

 

[SRTtoZ]

Yep, its crazy stupid. The best thing to do is wait for GOTY editions.

 

[border]

The games already have you repeating the same 3-4 types of missions for a tedious 25-30 hours. I'm generally confused about why people want to pay more money for additional copy-and-paste missions. I'm pretty well-tired of most open world games by the time they are over.

 

[DanteSparda504]

As the base game gets cheaper the DLC should to? There's no reason for this occur.

I can get Rock Band 2 for probably $10 right now. What of the song library? If I follow your logic, that all may as well be free!

No offense, it just sounds like you're sort of a penny pincher, OP. To put it lightly.

Pay the cost for the content or don't.

Harmonix did a price drop on their DLC though. All pre-RB3 DLC dropped to a dollar(normally $2). A few songs are even less, I think.

Bad example!

 

[Tellaerin]

Case in point - my wife just finished Assassin's Creed III and I was looking forward to picking up the DLC (Tyranny of George Washington costs a whopping $28 and the other single player missions cost a total of $10 across two pieces of DLC). Yet the game itself is normally priced $20. How could a full game be cheaper than its' DLC that is, at best, a few hours long?

Another case - I'm playing through Mass Effect 3 at the moment (bought the collector's edition back then) and I was shocked at the amount I had to pay for the overall single player DLC cost me a total of $50!!! That's almost the price of a brand new game :/!

You know how hardware manufacturers will sell you a console at a loss, so that they can make it up later by selling you games?

In this case, games like ME3 are the "consoles" and the DLC is the "games". They'll heavily discount the core games in order to get you to pay full price for a bunch of DLC. It's ridiculous, IMO (I spent more on ME3 DLC than I did for ME1, 2 and 3 combined), but I think that's where their heads are at with this.

 

[BibiMaghoo]

Map packs for Call of Duty 2 are still full price.

Nuff said.

Activision are exceptionally bad with their prices anyway though, they are the worst offender by far when it comes to keeping prices high.

 

[MadScientist]

It is smart to leave the price up, though. Games get sold for cheap digitally because people will buy them just to test them out or to have them in their library. But if someone is interested in the dlc, he likely already has played the base game and wants more content to actually play.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Ever play Train Simulator 2014™ my brother?!

 

[Maintenance]

I was planning on buying the DLCs for Fire Emblem: Awakening and I almost fell of my chair, since the ones that are left for me to buy equal to more money than the whole game (about 40-45 dollars). Fuck that.

 

[Wiktor]

I don't see why DLC should be cheaper than the main game. It makes perfect sense for it to be more expensive. The content is newer and after a while you can push out the main game for cheap and then earn decent money when people who liked it will buy DLC.

The only way DLC should be rated is if the price is justified by content on it's own. Not by comparing to the lowered price of the main game.

 

[Cormano]

And i just started AC3 this weekend, I hope the DLC goes on sale soon.