10 Most Insulting Video Game Industry Habits (That Have To End)
9. Pointless DLC
It used to be the case that when a game released, that was it.
Developers would swiftly move onto
their next project, powerless to make any further additions to the one they’d
just completed, which led to fairly rapid turnaround cycles rather than the once-per-generation
releases in huge franchises like Final Fantasy and Grand Theft Auto as seen today.
The dawn of downloadable content (DLC) gave developers the power to continue working on a game post-release. Ostensibly this should’ve been a win-win for both them and players alike, the former able to generate additional revenue and the latter able to derive additional enjoyment from a game. In an era where seemingly every title has a Season Pass, however, the practice seems heavily skewed towards the financial side of things.
Some DLCs are captivating packages of new content, expanding the world and mythos of a game and introducing new mechanics. For every Witcher 3: Blood And Wine or Borderlands 2 D&D homage, however, there are myriad of superfluous releases that add nothing to the base game and are entirely skippable, likely out of a fear of alienating players that will have already moved on from a game by the time its DLC releases from future sequels.