10 Times Video Game Publishers Insulted Their Fans
How stupid do they think we are?
Never will there be an excuse believable enough to justify some of the business decisions games publishers have greenlit in the past. Every penny counts, but is nickel-and-diming your own customers the best way to go about nurturing trust?
No. Not unless you're a conglomerate that's happy with being recognised as the 'Worst Company in America' for two years on the trot like EA have been, and that was before the backlash suffered from disgruntled Star Wars Battlefront 2 fans. For that debacle - as well as others - Electronic Arts has earned its unenviable place in this hall of fame as the company everyone loves to hate, but it's far from the only publisher deserving of being called out for anti-consumerist practices.
Activision, Capcom, Bethesda: none are able to boast a squeaky clean record thanks to abusing nostalgia, locking 'true endings' behind paid DLC and peddling disc-locked content respectively, but some have at least learned their lesson, making genuine efforts to make up for past mistakes.
Whatever hardware Microsoft waltzes on stage to unveil next, you can be sure as sugar that it won't be touching the word DRM with a barge pole, it's still paying for that disaster now, half a decade later.
Make as much money as you want, publishers, just have a little respect.
10. Street Fighter X Tekken's On-Disc DLC
What do you expect to find on the disc of a game you've just dropped full retail price for? A complete package where everything present is accessible through normal gameplay, or that exact same deal, only with half of what you paid for locked behind an additional fee?
If you'd asked Capcom which scenario represented consumer friendly back in 2012, it'd have shot straight for the second, because that's exactly what it did for Street Fighter X Tekken. An additional 12 characters were present from day one in the crossover brawler but not for free, oh no. You'd have to pay half the original asking price to access the likes of Blanka, Cody, Jack and Bryan Fury because, well, greed.
Capcom, of course, attempted to perform some damage control after being caught with its pants down, though it only dug its hole deeper with a limp excuse to do with saving hard drive space. Frustratingly, the collaboration between itself and Namco turned out to be a solid fighter, but this stain, along with poor sales, killed any enthusiasm for Namco's intended sequel.
Too bad. Tekken X Street Fighter could have been even better.