10 Ways The Video Game Industry Takes Advantage Of Its Biggest Fans
Buying on day one gets you the WORST version of any given game. Fact.
Though video games are an artistic medium, the industry itself is a business like any other, concerned first and foremost with making back its investments. A lot of the time, this means the market is being constantly flooded by the same genres and formulas; those that prove time and again that they make the most money.
A consequence of the tenacious pursuit of profit is that gamers themselves are often left out in the cold, straddled with 'optional' (to varying degrees) micro-transactions and forced to purchase day-one DLC in order to really get the full experience.
Of course, publishers wanting to make their money back, pay their employees and please their shareholders is completely understandable, but sometimes even this ideology goes a step too far. Instead of treating the audience with the respect they deserve, they treat them like cattle; they make them wait in the cold for special editions of the latest games, they charge them through the nose for extra content, and sometimes they purposely lie about specific functionality in order to push as many copies as possible onto unsuspecting players.
We all want to love video games, but sometimes the industry makes it a lot harder than it should be. As such, here are the 10 worst examples of the games industry taking advantage of its biggest fans...
10. Stripping Away Content For Day-One DLC
Publishers often claim that day one DLC is just 'additional' or 'unnecessary', but it often feels as though its just been stripped from the game, repackaged and sold separately for no other reason than to make a few extra bucks.
Its a truly off-putting practise, and one that many publishers have unfortunately started to adopt more than ever. The most infamous example remains Bioware releasing both Mass Effect 3 and Mass Effect 3: From Ashes simultaneously in 2012, the latter being a story-centric DLC pack that not only included extra weapons and armour, but an entirely new character named Javik that was initially intended to be on-disc. As you can imagine, fans weren't pleased, believing as they did that Microsoft and Bioware had purposely excluded Javik from the game in order to sell him separately, forcing consumers to fork out an extra $10 if they wanted to enjoy the game's narrative.
Day One DLC is always painted as a way for developers to 'keep working on a game' after the full version has gone into production, but it's hard to not be annoyed when you've already paid the 'full price', only to be reminded that you don't actually own the full game.