On-Disc DLC is ‘Just Plain Greed’

Almost two months ago we reported on Capcom’s new strategy of putting locked “DLC” on a game’s installation disc, ready to be unlocked later for a fee. This just felt wrong and a rippoff regardless of justification, with this sense of wrongness only strengthened by Capcom actually swearing at customers over their criticism of this practice.

Now, we have analyst Michael Pachter wading into this issue. During the latest issue of his show, Pach-Attack, he was asked if it reflected growing development costs or just as a way of getting more money from customers. He replied in no uncertain terms, “Yeah, it’s just plain greed. The answer is that simple. I think that DLC has been so successful that publishers are trying to get a jumpstart and if you put it on the disc it allows them to unlock it when they feel like it.”

He then said that hacking the disc to get at it, is as close as one could get to legal piracy, “The stuff on the disc, some gamers feel entitled to because they bought the disc, so they should have a right to anything that’s on the disc and that’s a dicey one, you actually do own the disc and I think, theoretically, if you could crack the code on the DLC you probably would be allowed to access it without paying. And I’m not even sure that’s stealing because you did, in fact, buy the disc. That’s about as close as you can get to legal piracy.” We are sure that the game companies will see that differently, arguing that the game is licenced, not sold and that the disc is merely the carrier for that game, which doesn’t allow one to have free reign over what they do with it. Finally, he reckoned that the practice of putting “DLC” on the disc will die out as gamers push back at what they feel is a rippoff.