10 Video Games To Blame For The Current State Of Games

7. Season Passes - L.A. Noire

Though loot boxes are the most prominent way for publishers to nickel-and-dime players these days, let's not forget about the impact of the good 'ol season pass.

Season passes were introduced almost a decade ago, whereby players could effectively pre-purchase DLC packs ahead of release at a discounted price, allowing publishers to receive an over-the-odds cash injection before said DLCs were even completed.

L.A. Noire was the first major AAA game to feature a season pass, and unsurprisingly the trend quickly caught on, with countless AAA titles following its greedy lead.

The primary issue, of course, was that the promised content was often vaguely detailed, and in the event that a game flopped commercially, there was no guarantee players would ever actually see all the planned content or even get a refund.

Then there's the issue of publishers blatantly carving content out of games that was completed during main production, effectively allowing them to double-dip players for material which, by all rights, should have been included in the main game - and in extreme cases, was already on the damn disc.

In essence the season pass was a precursor to "live service" games, especially with the likes of Rainbow Six Siege and Destiny 2 charging for annual season passes, basically allowing them to monetise content in perpetuity for years after the game has been released.

And we have L.A. Noire to thank for this, for while the season pass has diminished in popularity in recent years, largely replaced with loot boxes, it made publishers realise just how much extra money there was to be squeezed out of even purely single-player experiences.