10 Video Games That Made You Pay For Essential Features
We shouldn't have to pay for save slots, but Metal Gear Survive had different ideas.
Ever since its conception, DLC has had a contentious place within the video game industry. Though players initially laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of charging money for horse armour in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the practice of purchasing additional content is something that hasn't gone away and is unlikely to go anywhere soon.
If anything, DLC has become more prevalent in games today, with expansions, cosmetics, and battle passes now being expected in most new release.
Although paying for extra content seemed like an alien concept when it first appeared, developers have since shown that DLC can be a useful means of extending a game's lifecycle alongside giving players more of the games that they love. Sometimes the expansion can even be just as incredible as the base game, with The Witcher 3's Blood And Wine and BioShock 2's Minerva's Den standing out as some of the best expansions of all time.
Other times, though, publishers can be downright exploitative when it comes to DLC. Whereas horse armour was a harmless extra, there have been other times where games have required players to pay more for essential features that should have been part of the main game.
10. Starting A New Run - Mighty Doom (2023)
Being a free-to-play mobile game, players can expect a tonne of grinding in top-down roguelite MIghty Doom to upgrade the Doom Slayer's arsenal enough to progress in later levels. Getting the materials for said upgrades therefore takes numerous runs to acquire.
However, starting a new run in this game isn't as straight forward as it should have been. Instead of simply opting to try again after dying (which will happen a lot), beginning a new attempt is tied to an in-game currency known as Energy, which players will need to have five of if they'd like to play the game.
When Energy is depleted, the choice is to either wait for hours until the resource replenishes itself or to spend real money to get the Energy required to play.
More annoying is that this cutesy version of the gory run-and-gun shooter only allows players to hold a maximum of 20 Energy at a time. This means that players can only play a measly four games before they're forced to either wait or throw money at the game for the privilege of trying again.
Even for free-to-play games, being encouraged to pay to play the game is absurd.