Forbes: The Problem With BioWare's Mass Effect 3 Day-One DLC

Well, it sure is true for me. Mass Effect 3 will be the last Bioware game I buy. And that's coming from someone that bought each and every piece of DLC for the first two games and all the novels. I'm only buying ME 3 for closure, after that Bioware is dead to me. They want to make an additional $10 on me by ripping me off? Well, now I'm not gonna spend an additional $30 on ME 3 DLC like I planned to do. Youtube will tell me everything I could but won't buy.


Buy the game later for $10 and make believe the dlc doesn't exist, though it won't make much of an impact where people have to have it regardless and plunk down $80 for a digital collectors edition (lol) and day one dlc. Personally still have never played Lair of the Shadow Broker and any other paid dlc content associated with this series "because it doesn't exist".
 
Now if we were listening to a podcast, someone would be saying in a snarky voice how fans only get upset about this stuff because they don't understand how game development works.
 
I don't see how anyone could say it wasn't supposed to be in the game if they actually played the game with the DLC character. They made him far too important to the story to be a nice little extra like Zaeed. He actually changes some main story scenes if you bring him along instead of just throwing out quick little comments during battle.
 
and people will continue to defend it, or some people will say they dont like it but will buy it anyways. This of course amounts to the same thing.

You can count me as one of those people. I found this to be pretty low on Bioware or EA's part but I am such a ME whore I couldn't stop myself from buying it. Sorry...
 
I don't see how anyone could say it wasn't supposed to be in the game if they actually played the game with the DLC character. They made him far too important to the story to be a nice little extra like Zaeed. He actually changes some main story scenes if you bring him along instead of just throwing out quick little comments during battle.

if the game doesn't feel incomplete to someone without the DLC, whether it was originally intended or not, i'd say that's really all that matters personally, and i don't know the answer to that, since i'm not picking up this game at all.

i hardly buy DLC, and i won't buy a base game if it isn't worth the asking price to me. that's how we should police this crap. not getting angry because a long game with loads of content had some taken out to be sold seperately.

i don't *care* if it was originally meant to be in the game or not. i don't care about the developers original plans when i'm buying the final product.
 
Little tired of Bioware trying to tell me what I do and do not understand. Pretty shitty attitude in general to their 'fans' ever since the DA2 blow up. Fuck them all.
 
You can count me as one of those people. I found this to be pretty low on Bioware or EA's part but I am such a ME whore I couldn't stop myself from buying it. Sorry...

Don't worry, just don't be surprised when Tali, Garrus and the Citadel become DLC in Mass Effect: Revelations.

And if rumours are to be believed,
a non-offensively bad ending
will also be DLC.
 
The DLC character provides some interesting insights and could be considered important from a lore perspective, but has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the game. Outside of being Day-One DLC, it's no more offensive than a novelization or spinoff-game would be.
 
because ME3 doesn't give you way more content for your $60 than other games?

stuff gets cut out of games mid development all the damn time. judge the base game at $60, not what may have been intended to be in the base game at one point, or content locked out on the disk.

Not only that but the content must be ready like 5 months before shipping (beta state). Anything that is NOT ready at this point doesn't make the release. Not saying it's necessarily the case of Bioware but many develloper nowadays continue to devellop stuff after beta time and many times it equates having some DLC ready for release day or very near the release day.
 
if the game doesn't feel incomplete to someone without the DLC, whether it was originally intended or not, i'd say that's really all that matters personally, and i don't know the answer to that, since i'm not picking up this game at all.
This is a very slippery slope. You could cut half of Skyrim and the game would not feel incomplete. You could cut out ghost runs and extra characters in Rayman Origins and the game would not feel incomplete. It's not an invalid argument, but from the perspective of someone that has played through ME3 with the DLC, you are having an incomplete experience without it.
 
Bioware is one of the few companies i wish i could go back in time and stop myself from supporting them in their early years.
 
You can argue about budgets and manpower and original intent all you want

What bugs me about this is that what developers should do is assume that they have to convince people to buy the game and make decisions accordingly. This leads to all sorts of good stuff, examples being everything from Valve, most of the indie community, CD Projekt Red, and sadly few others.

EA assumes that the game is going to sell and goes from there. This leads to milking their customers.

Now just because they are correct and it makes them money does not make it right and so I don't support them.
 
As my neighbor showed me yesterday, who pirated the game the files for it are actually IN THE GAME. All that it is is a 21.3 MB decrypter that lets you play the DAY ONE DLC that was supposedly not finished till later. It's bullshit and I feel more than a little pissed knowing this since I paid 60 bucks for the game on Origin.
 
Bioware is one of the few companies i wish i could go back in time and stop myself from supporting them in their early years.
Whoa, whoa now. Just go back in time and stop buying any of their games from this generation. They were fine before that, and as dear to me as Valve are now during the BG era.

Their decline has been steady since then, though. Glad everyone finally seems to have noticed, though it'll take a few months for some sanity to creep into reviews and impressions of the pretty mediocre ME3.
 
Trust, or lack thereof, is definitely an issue here. Many aren't willing to trust that the content was cut for anything other than make players spend extra for the DLC, out of greediness.
 
I thought this was worthy of a new thread rather than the OT cause most people seem to caught up in, you know, play the game at the moment. Minor spoiler in article, removed these quotes though.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...wares-mass-effect-3-day-one-dlc-from-ashes/2/

I think an analogy here would also be useful.

Imagine a band releases a 12-song album for $14.99. On the same exact day the same band offers a downloadable extra that has three songs not included on the album for an additional $4.99. Then the band says that those extra songs are just “sugar on top” and that they’re trying to release “awesome music” so fans should just stop complaining because “they don’t know what it’s like to record music.”

Now imagine that the same band had, in previous years, released 15 song albums for $14.99.

It’s not a perfect analogy, I realize, but it does help illustrate how fans are beginning to feel robbed by the booming gaming industry.

This analogy is flawed, because it's not taking into account the opposing stance. The opposition version of the analogy would be something along the lines of:

Imagine a band releases a 12-song album, where each song is five minutes long for $14.99. On the same exact day the same band offers a downloadable extra that has three songs not included on the album for an additional $4.99. Then the band says that those extra songs are just “sugar on top” and that they’re trying to release “awesome music” so fans should just stop complaining because “they don’t know what it’s like to record music.”

Now imagine that the same band had, in previous years, released 15 song albums for $14.99. Each song on *that* album is four minutes long..

It's an imperfect analogy - music doesn't cost significantly more to make if the song is longer! - but that's the closest parallel. You're not actually getting less content for your $14.99, but it's being presented in a way that you believe you are.
 
It's EA. Nobody should be butthurt about anything they do because they've made their intentions perfectly clear. Don't like it, don't support them.

Please, don't support them.
 
As my neighbor showed me yesterday, who pirated the game the files for it are actually IN THE GAME. All that it is is a 21.3 MB decrypter that lets you play the DAY ONE DLC that was supposedly not finished till later. It's bullshit and I feel more than a little pissed knowing this since I paid 60 bucks for the game on Origin.

This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of on-disc DLC. Pirates will have a better game experience than the hardcore fans, who the DLC usually is geared towards.
Like SFxT, it's a shame that pirates and hackers get access to more content (and in a competitive game this is really annoying for the rest of us).
 
Just so I'm clear.... Bioware/EA does it, it's bad. Capcom does it, it's good. This is what GAF has taught me over the past couple of weeks. Someone should let the Forbes person know about Capcom's SF X T antics to see if its worth discussing...if are fighting games not worth the discussion and its assumed the FGC are suckers anyway.
 
This is one of the reasons I'm not a fan of on-disc DLC. Pirates will have a better game experience than the hardcore fans, who the DLC usually is geared towards.
Like SFxT, it's a shame that pirates and hackers get access to more content (and in a competitive game this is really annoying for the rest of us).

By that same token, you also shouldn't be a fan of purchasing *games*. After all, pirates have a better game experience than the hardcore fans there, too. Either way they're not paying money for a product.

Just so I'm clear.... Bioware/EA does it, it's bad. Capcom does it, it's good. This is what GAF has taught me over the past couple of weeks. Someone should let the Forbes person know about Capcom's SF X T antics to see if its worth discussing...if are fighting games not worth the discussion and its assumed the FGC are suckers anyway.
Hey, I'm fine with it either way. You may not like my opinion, but it's consistent!

(I do agree - in both cases - with the person earlier in the thread who was wondering about archival issues in the future, though. We'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.)
 
Just so I'm clear.... Bioware/EA does it, it's bad. Capcom does it, it's good. This is what GAF has taught me over the past couple of weeks. Someone should let the Forbes person know about Capcom's SF X T antics to see if its worth discussing...if are fighting games not worth the discussion and its assumed the FGC are suckers anyway.
Tons of people bitched about it in the SFx Tekken thread though. People keep buying it after complaining though, so the companies don't learn anything.
 
prove that EA didn't give them the extra budget to make another companion on the promise that it be DLC...

i mean, who knows either way, but that'll be the story.
I have not played the game, but from impressions like this:
I don't see how anyone could say it wasn't supposed to be in the game if they actually played the game with the DLC character. They made him far too important to the story to be a nice little extra like Zaeed. He actually changes some main story scenes if you bring him along instead of just throwing out quick little comments during battle.
it seems unrealistic to believe that EA said 'Here's $200,000 to make the game, but if you can throw in some day one DLC, we'll give you an extra $50,000.

Above numbers pulled from my ass, obviously.

Personally, I don't like the day one DLC practice, but if you're going to do it at least lie about it better. When it's done this way it's just insulting our intelligence. This reminded me of when Rockstar initially blamed PatrickW for 'adding in' the hot coffee mod in San Andreas (mini gameplay, interior locations and new dialog) all contained within his 41kb file.
 
What exactly is the point of Day 1 DLC?

I mean, why not Day 31 DLC? Just ... wait a month. It would at least look better from a PR perspective.
 
prove that EA didn't give them the extra budget to make another companion on the promise that it be DLC...

i mean, who knows either way, but that'll be the story.

Cmon now, really?

I think those quotes, and the video showing the character is right there in the shipped product is PLENTY enough. At the very least, the deliberately misled. I dont have a problem really with on the disc DLC, I just think its wrong to charge extra for it.
 
Just so I'm clear.... Bioware/EA does it, it's bad. Capcom does it, it's good. This is what GAF has taught me over the past couple of weeks. Someone should let the Forbes person know about Capcom's SF X T antics to see if its worth discussing...if are fighting games not worth the discussion and its assumed the FGC are suckers anyway.

Plenty of people complained in the Street Fighter x Tekken thread, and even then that's besides the point. BioWare went on a PR tour pretty much lying to consumers and press.
 
Little tired of Bioware trying to tell me what I do and do not understand. Pretty shitty attitude in general to their 'fans' ever since the DA2 blow up. Fuck them all.

I definately remember their PR about the Shale stuff in DA:O being faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar less condescending and more believable, yes.
 
Just so I'm clear.... Bioware/EA does it, it's bad. Capcom does it, it's good. This is what GAF has taught me over the past couple of weeks. Someone should let the Forbes person know about Capcom's SF X T antics to see if its worth discussing...if are fighting games not worth the discussion and its assumed the FGC are suckers anyway.

It is not Okay !

What exactly is the point of Day 1 DLC?

I mean, why not Day 31 DLC? Just ... wait a month. It would at least look better from a PR perspective.

They want money sooner than ever, they can't wait.
 
I don't know what words I can use to describe what I felt

Let me guess, around the lines of :

heart-broken-icon.png
 
why don't the actual developers in the industry show some spine? say anything? does this bug anyone else? i get the upwardly mobile producer types doing damage control for their bosses, but i kind of figured (naively?) that the people who actually make the games were secretly opposed to unethical, anti-consumer practices like this, and resent being forced to comply with their publisher's gouging schemes. game consumers need to show discipline and oppose companies who support these practices (and reward those that don't), but the developers themselves could stand to help. they're wage peons not in a great bargaining position, true, but they aren't completely powerless
 
And then we have people going out and getting the CE too. Fuck this noise.

But you know, to be fair - I'd imagine a lot of people actually on the Bioware dev team are kind of let down that they execs or whatever made this DLC> They spent so much time making it, planning it etc. - now knowing that not 100% of those who purchase the game will actually ever get to pay it. These guys already have their salaries, so I don't think they benefit too much from DLC sales.
 
They want money sooner than ever, they can't wait.

That's about all I can think of, to front load recouping costs (and/or to provide a pre-order incentive). But, a code can still be provided that just gives the first DLC free that will be released in X weeks rather than launch and accomplish the same thing.

Only real "logical" thing I can think of is that they imagine more people want the DLC sooner to go through it when they buy the game rather than later when they're done with it.
 
The video posted previously just helps show how this integrated content that was cut to provide Day one DLC. I had previously Gamefly'd ME1 and ME2, but I decided with the final game in the trilogy that I would purchase this game new. This is what I was suppose to do right?

All of the poor publisher and starving developer defenders like the casters from Gamers with Jobs and just about ever other sell out podcast producer tells me to buy new if I want all the content. It is my fault as a renter or a used buyer if I don't get all the content. Fine.. I play by the rules and still don't get all the content. Don't feed me that line of crap that it was separate this was clearly integrated content that was cut out on purpose to raise the price point. I don't see how anyone who believes that shit has ever had a real adult job out the in the corporate world. The shit some of us have seen to fuck the consumer.. please.

Now I find myself looking at some obviously cut DLC which sole purpose was to basically raise the price of the game to 70.00 if I want the full experience. From the posters here it does seem to impact the experience a great deal. I guess its back to Gamefly or used for me if it has EA on it.

We have Catwoman, Kingdoms and now this. How much further is this bullshit going to go? Want to join the mage guild at Winterhold? Deposit 10.00.
 
How much further is this bullshit going to go? Want to join the mage guild at Winterhold? Deposit 10.00.

I eagerly look forward to planning the cheapest way through a game while still experiencing the most of the content.
 
What exactly is the point of Day 1 DLC?

I mean, why not Day 31 DLC? Just ... wait a month. It would at least look better from a PR perspective.

Because it was something that was originally woven into game that really can only be experienced as you play through it. It isn't add-on content that can be enjoyed at time during or after the experience.

It is sort of like the Catwoman Batman AC DLC which was locked behind a new copy of the game (or a $10 fee if you bought it used). Instead, this is locked behind a collector's edition, and I don't think you can buy it separately. It may not be as much content though, comparatively.
 
All that day one dlc and pre order dlc is the reason why i don`t buy games on day 1 anymore. I don`t like to get screwed over and usually wait for a 20-30$ price point if at all.
 
Top Bottom