I see GOG have added their first DLC, ironically called “The Con Artist”.
gog.com/gamecard/omerta_city … artist_dlc
On the one hand, I want to see GOG add more modern games to its library, but I also really liked how they’ve always sold complete games packed with bonus content. Perhaps they should refuse games that are sold in pieces. That would keep the overall quality of games on the site higher. At least the DLC is DRM-free though.
Hard to make the distinction between nickel and diming DLC and real if small expansions these days. Just buy what you want/think is worth the asked price. This doesn’t reflect badly on gog as far as I’m concerned. Now, if they start adding DRM based games, that would certainly be against the policies they’ve championed.
It may sometimes be hard to know where to draw the line, but just because the line isn’t clear doesn’t mean that there cannot be a line. I admire GOG not just because they’re DRM-free, but because they stand for something. Maybe they should draw the line at stand alone expansions.
Would you want them to stop selling Baldur’s Gate II Complete, Heroes of Might and Magic 3: Complete, Icewind Dale Complete, and so on, in order to only offer the vanilla games in those cases, which means no Throne of Bhaal, Armageddon’s Blade, The Shadow of Death, Heart of Winter, and so on, if they lowered the prices?
Personally I’m among the people who are hoping they will be able to work through licensing and add the expansions to the games they lack them for right now as it makes them incomplete, and like many others rejoiced when they finally added expansions to games like Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri as that makes such games that much more worth having. I mean, with such a line, if they ever got to sell Diablo II (they obviously won’t, Blizzard love their own store, I’m just saying) they’d do it without Lord of Destruction.
Perhaps you were thinking modern games only but there’s still the occasional real expansion that isn’t stand alone these days. Or DLC that isn’t quite of the expansion caliber but at the same time costs less than an expansion tended to (often like 60% of the full game) making it equally worthwhile. There are probably stand alone expansions that aren’t worth the money they ask for too. Lines are hard to draw.
I think their current strategy with those older games makes sense. Selling them as one big package. For modern games, perhaps they could sell the vanilla title, and then add the expansion pack later as a stand alone game (rather than requiring the base game to play it), so it’s essentially another game. Or offer the extra content for free, such as with The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition, if there isn’t enough for a stand alone expansion. What I’m concerned about is how content is dribbled out one level or character at a time as DLC, especially if that content is withheld from the original game.
Hmm, can you give me an example of a modern game with an expansion pack (not just DLC but a proper expansion)? I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
Skyrim has a couple, the latest being Dragonborn. Things like Asssassin Creed 3’s The Tyranny of King Washington and Mass Effect 3’s three story expansions qualify too as far as I’m concerned. Speaking of Ubisoft and EA, Anno 2070 got the Deep Ocean expansion and The Sims 3 has 10 so far outside the smaller DLC “stuff packs”. Expansions are always popular with strategy games, turn based like Civilization and Might & Magic Heroes or real time like Total War and Sins of a Solar Empire, among many others. They’re all far from launch day weapon packs and the like. Every big multiplayer FPS seems to get map packs released too. Why would those not qualify as multiplayer expansions? Sure, some of them might be maps cut from the main game and shoved out the door a month later for $15 but there’s also material created post release with games like Battlefield 3 acquiring substantial content over time. Activision for example has had a different studio dedicated to making new COD map packs. Blizzard will probably make an expansion for Diablo III, not stand alone like Starcraft II’s, while almost every MMO (with or without subs) gets them. It seems to me that expansions are almost as relevant as ever these days, thanks to dd, even if you personally disqualify some of these examples.
For those larger expansions it makes sense to sell them on GOG. I’m unconvinced about map packs, they have a way of dividing players into those with and without the maps. They’re a step above selling costumes for sure, but they often feel like something which should have been included with the base game.
It’s nice to see GOG is treating this issue seriously and asking the community for feedback. I did the survey and also posted some thoughts on online features here if anyone’s interested.
Yep, I answered yes to dlc, yes to episodic games, yes to allowing you to download alphas/betas if you pre-order a title, no to season passes (but explaining that I’d be ok if they decide to sell some Deluxe version of the game that will include all the dlc as it arrives, as long as it’s all without login and merely adds the dlc in your library just as when you buy it separately), no to games with third party login since that’s DRM and a very slippery slope from there even if they initially allow it as per your suggestion (not that many publishers would rework their games with GOG specific online features).
I said yes to everything except for adding games that require 3rd party software. The entire reason I purchase games on GOG instead of Steam, even paying more for the privilege sometimes is for having games without DRM. I only purchase on Steam to get the game deals. If I purchase new, I purchase a retail box. I am fine with episodic content and I miss having game expansions. I would love more of them as long as they are not like this current environment of nickle and dime content that doesn’t really have any weight to them. I would ideally like to see devs support online modes with free content and only charge for single player stuff. I know I am dreaming though.
I’m a fan of DLC when done right. I just picked up the Everybody’s Golf DLC for the Vita, and I’m having a blast with it. However, this is extra features added over 9 months since the original game was released (although it’d been out in Japan for quite some time before), hence it was content they could’ve only thought to include after the original product was finished, created as a way of increasing the replay value, and only worth Sony investing in had the original product been successful enough to have been viable to make.
Day 1 DLC, on the other hand, is the most shocking form of business practicing I’ve seen in quite some time, and I oppose it even more than DRM (although day 1 ought to not be confused with additional content to free games). At least, I oppose it particularly if it affects the length and gameplay.
Paying extra for costumes I’m not too bothered about, because this is just paying for a little extra aesthetics. But leaving out entire characters that are already on the disc you’ve already paid full retail for? Paying extra for content already made, and is needed to fulfill the main gaming experience? If we allow practices like this to keep happening, it won’t surprise me if one day, we reach the final level of a game, only to find we have to log on and pay extra to download the final boss and end credits.
What’s worse about these cases, is that people only find out about these sickening practices AFTER they’ve bought the game. It’s terrible when a game has DRM, or day 1 DLC, but you’re not explicitly told this until after you hit a brickwall, or you upload the game to find a certain segment blocked out. That stands to reason that the publishers were aware the game would anger customers, but are just trying to run with as much money as they can before anyone notices.
Do you think there’s much of a distinction between a season pass and a deluxe edition that includes all future DLC? A deluxe version would be the regular game + all future DLC, whereas a season pass would just be a way of buying all the future DLC as a separate purchase from the game. So there would be two purchases instead of one, but would this be a problem if you’re already in favour of them selling lots of separate DLC? Personally I’m in favour of larger purchases, especially if they each require a separate installer. Two purchases instead of one is much the same as the traditional game + expansion pack. I’d be okay with that.
They should be able to make any online features agnostic towards a specific server, (but perhaps GOG’s servers would be the default configuration). So long as they distributed the server software with the game so that anyone could set up their own server, I don’t see a problem. It would still be a restrictive system as you’d need a login to use it, but I don’t see that as a problem since fans could set up their own leaderboard server if GOG ever went down. Think of how anyone can setup an email server, but most people just use Hotmail or Gmail because it’s easier.
It might not be too hard for developers to add code to support this either, provided that GOG created the necessary libraries. It might be as simple as adding a few configuration settings and a conditional to the game’s code where applicable, e.g. if Steam, post to Steam leaderboard, else if GOG post to GOG leaderboard.
GOG have released a followup poil.
gog.com/news/new_gaming_opti … wup_survey
I voted “No” and left the following comment:
Hopefully they’ll consider making a requirement like this.
Yeah, I posted similar. If the multiplayer is only accessible via their servers, no thanks. If it’s also accessible with good old TCP/IP options or custom player servers then ok, even if that choice would lack options like the persistent world and such it would at least be playable. The AI skirmishes would hardly be the reason people buy it.