Features & News
CD Projekt Red: DLC shouldn’t be priced
August 10, 2012, Author: Andy Corrigan, 1 Comment
While I didn’t get on with The Witcher 2 quite as well as I’d hoped, I definitely have to admire CD Projekt Red’s ability to treat their consumers with the upmost respect. Their outlook is consistently refreshing in this respect, evident by the way they continually choose not to burden the player with the type of restrictive, always-online DRM that has plagued Ubisoft’s recent PC endeavours.
Now, they have endeared me that little bit further, by elaborating on their belief that DLC should be a free, post-sale service.
In an excellent interview courtesy of VG247’s Dave Cook, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz was pressed on the ethics of DLC delivery:
“We’ve always believed in free DLCs. The thing is that we consider DLCs as a normal post sale service, which shouldn’t be priced. Back when retail games were dominant, we had expansion packs. These were really large chunks of content, which were worth their price. If today’s DLCs offered the same amount of content, they would be worth paying for, but in most cases players think they are overcharged for what they receive. That’s why we offer expansions to our game for free. This is also a way of saying “thank you” to the people who decided to buy our game instead of copying it from an unauthorised source.”
In a world where content is cut from games to sell later, where you need to buy additional content that’s on the disc you already bought, or service policies that “protect” us from great value, it’s heartening to see that somewhere there’s a company that not only gives a damn about the people who buy their games, but looks to reward them too.
I wholeheartedly recommend reading the whole interview, found here.
(Source: VG247.com)
Feature Type: News | Tagged CD Projekt, DLC, Downloadable Content, drm, expansion packs, Interviews, RPG, the witcher 2
Trent said:
Great interview. CD Projekt obviously know what they're doing (Witcher 2 was awesome) and have some unusual views on DLC that set them apart. I think it's interesting to note that they compare DLC with expansion packs and I agree on that front. When you get something like The Shivering Isles you don't mind paying for it because it's the sort of thing that would have been released as an expansion disk back in the day. When it comes to paying 1200MSP for a bunch of fucking maps however it's hard not to imagine the money-men licking their lips. To say all DLC should be free is a bit much because some does take a lot of extra work and time and effort and the people that put in that work need to be paid.
It's no good developing the content during the game development time because you're then left with the argument of 'Why wasn't it in the full release?' so the payment justifies the extra time in the studio needed post-release. What amazes me is that there are thousands of people using simple tools to create maps for PC versions of Left 4 Dead and other PC shooters who then upload them to free mod sites and allow millions to play their creations. Sure, these people probably have jobs, but the fact still stands that if bedroom modders can make excellent maps (and some of them are genuinely brilliant) and give them away then how come Activision seem to think 1200MSP is needed to pay for Infinity Wards minuscule amount of extra time needed to create maps for CoD? The mind boggles.
Posted on: August 11 8:45 PM || Report || Reply