10 Most Insulting Kinds Of Video Game DLC

8. Non-Cosmetic Items

Non-cosmetic items, pay-to-win, and pay-for-progress all sort of fit into the same category here. While these items can almost always be purchased with some sort of in-game currency, or discovered in game with enough time and effort, these sorts of DLC packs and microtransactions prey on your lack of time and energy.

Want a really cool sword in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey but can’t be bothered grinding for the special currency to then hope it shows up in the special currency store that only rotates a few items per week and day? Not to worry, you can buy Helix credits and get all the cool s**t you want.

Now, admittedly I devoured Odyssey and this is the only instance for this particular list where I did fall off the wagon and actually request Helix credits for Christmas so I could make my horse look like a unicorn, but non-cosmetics are always a slippery slope. Even though they don’t fall into the same category as loot boxes since you always know what you’re buying, the fact that there are entire development teams dedicated to making cooler-looking and better-functioning gear so you’ll be sorely tempted to gear up your character feels a little gross. While there are generally ways of obtaining this gear without spending money, it’s purposely designed to be a tedious process that you might prefer to avoid.

Before we move on, this point absolutely includes every game trying to exploit your dopamine receptors by offering you buffs to collect experience faster or resource packs.

While all of the above are a little annoying, by far the worst offender is the Star Wars Battlefront-style ‘pay-to-win’ DLC packs and microtransactions. Single player games offering non-cosmetics is one thing, but when a multiplayer game is won by whoever spent the most on their souped up gear, something has gone very wrong.