Current DLC Complaints

Now if you readers follow me on Twitter, you may already know that I’m not quite exactly a fan of the current DLC model. I feel that most of the content found in them these days are rip-offs and blatant cash grabs. They often offer you a poor amount of content for a large price, or alternatively, they offer useless vanity items that cost you the same price a cheap meal would. I find that DLC works best when it’s priced reasonably and it offers meaningful gameplay additions/enhancements.

When Xbox 360 came out and internet-connected gaming consoles became more prevalent, my mind was full of wonderful thoughts about how developers could add extra levels or story chapters to extend the amount of time I would be able to have with my favorite games. The first Dragon Age and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion expansions are excellent examples of this idea in action.
    
Unfortunately, DLC these days mostly consist of lame microtransactions, season passes for outfits that cost more than the game itself (Dead or Alive I’m looking at you) or a series of high price/low-quality content missions like the first season pass for Destiny. When the first piece of content dropped, I was shocked to have finished it all up in about an hour, which is crazy considering they were charging $20 for it at the time.  And I don’t even want to talk about Star Wars Battlefront, the game that many gamers complained about its lack of content and season pass that cost as much as the game itself.
    
Reasons such as those mentioned are why I give such huge kudos to developers like CD PROJEKT RED. Their season pass for Witcher 3 offers huge portions of story-driven gameplay easily on par with their main offering AND they throw in a ton of free DLC, the very same sort of small in-game items that would be paid microtransactions in any other title. When I see a game offer the kind of season pass content that Witcher 3 does, I gladly shell out the money for all that interesting extra content. But if you offer me a season pass for $40 and then push out piece after piece of bland, uninteresting content and useless items? Let’s just say: Don’t fucking spit on me and try to tell me it’s raining.
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​By: Richard Jewell