Gaming, Issues with DLC

DLC, Good News or Bad News

Any Gamer out there will be familiar with the term, downloadable content or DLC.  DLC is essentially game content that is either downloaded digitally after a game is purchased or in some cases, on disk content that is withheld from the main release and sold at a later date, often at a premium. With the release of the current generation consoles (PlayStation 4 and XBOX ONE), the games industry has been marred in controversy with the release of “broken” games, requiring Gigabytes of memory to patch issues,  day one DLC and pre-order bonuses  that are convoluted,  greedy and absolutely unnecessary.  

A recent example of these issues would be Destiny. Destiny is an online team based shooter released last year on all gaming platforms. The DLC was to be released a few months after the games release and customers were to be charged about $20 or £15 in the UK. The issue came when players were able to access the entire area well before the DLC release date, by a series of jumps, accessed through a level in the main game. This showed the entire DLC area was finished and ready when the original game was released; the only change was the area wasn’t populated with enemies.

So, the developers of the Game appeared to be withholding access to the levels from the original game with the intention to sell it as a DLC package at one third of the game’s price! The issue was further compounded by the fact that Destiny was considered far too short in the first place and the decision to withhold parts of the game to sell as DLC wasn't right and would maybe have benefited the developer’s and players more if the game was released in full and offered more in game content.  

As a gamer, this is not an isolated incident and the actions taken by developers, withholding on disk content and passing it off as DLC only leaves a bitter taste and a feeling of being duped, as if paying £50 for a game isn't already enough, they expect another £50 just to get the game we probably should got in the first place!