8 Ways The Video Game Industry Punishes Its Most Loyal Consumers

4. Season Passes & DLC Rip-Off Early Adopters; Get Packaged Into GOTY Editions Anyway

We've all invested in DLC and additional content, only for a 'Game of the Year'/'Definitive' edition to release with everything bundled together at a drastically reduced price. Yes, it's good business and remains one of the only ways to make an older project profitable again, but where's the kickback to early investors? Where are the discounts given to those who facilitated said 'GOTY Editions' in the first place?

They're ultimately forgotten about, unless you want to buy another version of the same game to access additional content that is now being priced for less than the 'vanilla' version you bought in the first place.

Continuing on from the idea of building not a game but a 'platform' of mechanics that can support a few year's worth of content, more and more we're seeing games ship with 'Season Passes', even if the developers don't actually have a year's worth of additional assets worth making.

Most notably was Rocksteady asking for money before they'd outlined what we were paying for in Arkham Knight, or Bethesda similarly announcing a season pass for Fallout 4, without any specifics.

Both these examples tap into the notion that it's the 'done thing' to ask consumers to invest in a season pass, despite the length of said 'season' sometimes only lasting a few months (just ask Mass Effect Andromeda's early adopters). Couple the previous point about a game being canned if it doesn't catch on with the assumedly 'guaranteed' content promised by a season pass, and you have something like Mass Effect Andromeda, which profited nicely from fans up front, and fell apart immediately afterwards.