What is unnacceptable, is that a publisher sells that kind of things that everyone can create.

I’m sorry, but the post launch support is what you expect from the pricetag of the box, especially for a game like this that is overpriced. Map packs are created most of the time before the game is released and selling them serves as a bonus for the publisher after the release.

What I’m saying is not that people shouldn’t be payed for their job, it’s that the profit margins on map packs and DLC in general are unnacceptable, especially with a game like Modern Warfare 2 that is going to sell millions of units and yet only cost 20 million dollars to produce.

I’m willing to pay 50€ for a game, and I do that all the time, but I’m sick of this business model where the biggest games like Modern Warfare 2 have huge profit margins and take advantage of the stupid userbase by selling loads of DLC, and where other games struggle to recoup from their development costs. (mostly because of publishers fees)

Once the next version is released, you can pretty much forget about playing any old versions, because hardly anyone else is going to be playing.
Have you ever tried to play Counter Strike 1.6, Tribes or Quake III ? There are still people playing them. And if I remember well, there are more people playing Unreal Tournament 2004 than Unreal Tournament III.

As for Killing Floor, I totaly agree with that kind of DLC, because it adds a non-gameplay related element, and allows you to support the developper if you want, but don’t force you to do so.

But I’m against paid DLC which adds gameplay-related content, because that’s just a way to hide a higher price which is not justified. Publishers have been rising the prices for several years now but they haven’t really raised the development budgets of the games. They have only been increasing their profit margins. And I’m sorry, but we don’t have to follow that tendancy.

It’s not the PC Gamers who have to start paying for more things, it’s the console gamers who should stop paying for random crap. And no, PC gaming is not going to die because there are still PC gamers who are willing to spend money for quality games made for the PC, as long as the price is reasonnable.

If it changes, it changes thats not really bothering me all that much, theres paid DLC available for Killing Floor for example.

Not true for plenty of console games.

Having some free DLC is a nice gesture by the devs. Several games have released previously paid for content for free on consoles too (RSV1/2 for example). You have to look at it in this way though – it’s a nice gesture – it’s not your right to get this stuff for free.

Sorry friend I play on consoles these days. And in that world ya gotta pay for most DLC.

And yea I agree with ya G1GA. I think eventualy will be paying into cloud like services where you will get the dlc for free as long as you keep paying. Because … wait for it …

Advert:

“Now for your enjoyment, grab the Map for Call of Duty States of War, for FREE. Thats right I said free.” -Proudly brought to you by Coke a Cola.

Gonna be like comercials or something, that will run each time you boot up the game. You wait will be something like The Guild, brought to you by Sprint. Good show btw.

But I think it will all be paid online subscriptions like TV is now. Sorta like cloud but different then we envision it right now.

Try buying a first gen 360 game that has matchmaking and see if theres anyone online to play with. Dead or Alive 4, or Perfect Dark Zero for example. My guess is both will be completely dead. With no server window to check out player counts you are completely reliant on whatever the game finds for you.

Yeah, I agree. And this, bdh et al, (if you’re still out there) is why (hardcore) PC gaming has to change if it’s going to keep growing.

Counter Strike has had alot of free DLC, the new payment model for one.
TF2s continuous free updates.
Battlefield 2′s latest patch included 2 booster packs that were previously charged for and an extra map on top of that for free.
L4D free updates.

To be fair, only one map pack was released for CoD4.

You touch on a very good point though, which is the real longevity of todays online games. Once the next version is released, you can pretty much forget about playing any old versions, because hardly anyone else is going to be playing. DLC does a similar thing by almost forcing you to get the latest maps, or you’ll keep getting booted from playlists and have fewer options in general to choose from.

The thing is that this is excellent business for devs, because the consumer has to keep buying if he/she wants the best experience.

We can, even now, probably still go and dust off a SNES or a NES and Play Mario Kart or whatever for hours and get the same experience that we got from day 1. Our money that we spent way back then is still offering value, but I think that this is not going to be the case with gaming in the future.

Did you not get a game of the year edition over there then?

The flip side of DLC is that it helps maintain interest in the game and thus develops more sales.

Your going to get it for free in the box at day one, and the game will cost 90usd to buy.

or:

Your going to spend 60usd to buy said game, and then three dlc map packs at 10usd each.

In the end its gonna be the samething. This is a way of video game downsizing. Gamers are paying more but don’t think they are because they have bought into the idea of “Game expansions” via dlc. I have all but stopped playing warhawk because I don’t have the map pack add ons and thus playing it w/o said add ons leaves me with very few games to chose from and sparsly populated ones at that. Could I buy the add ons? Yes, I could. But why would I want to drop another 15plus usd on that when I could download the wholey new game Fat Princess for the same price? In the end the paid DLC hurts Warhawk sales in the long term because of the same thing I just mentioned. At this point why would you buy cod4 for still nearly 60usd, and then the collection of add ons? You wouldn’t if you wanted to buy MW, you would wait for MW2 and pay just about the same price. Its counter productive. Plus you have alot of people that invested in the CoD MWone addons(spending 90plus usd on the game in all, and they may not be very excited about having to do the samething all over again in such a short period of time. And I didn’t even mention the last CoD WaW, same type of thing, lest that game was a different setting.

I wonder how much map pack dlc effects sales. Or if guys like Patcher even factor that into the equation. Most people buy CoD games for online MP. Why upgrade and respend, reinvest for basicly the same game experience?

It’s time gamers woke up a little and smelt the coffee. If you want to go on enjoying gaming progressing as it has done over the years then it’s got to be paid for. Using stuff like lack of dedicated servers to justify stealing isn’t going to help one little bit.

If Counter Strike, Battlefield, Crysis had free PC DLC, then I can see why MW2 PC players would expect the same.

Companies charging for stuff they have spent time developing is unacceptable? With an attitude like that you wonder why the emphasis is more on the consoles?

Oh snap I sure got told.

derp.

and MOD the hell out of it.
What is your problem with mods ?

Isn’t a match making service what has fueled LIVE and PSN for years(seems to do pretty well there)
Aren’t dedicated servers what has fueled online gaming since the very beginning ?

And you seem to be confused. Matchmaking and anticheat features are two different things. One has nothing to do with the other. All PC FPS currently use anticheat features.

Call of Duty 4 was, as already pointed out, pirated to all hell and back on the PC and made up a fairly small slab of the game’s sales.
Do you have actual figures or are you just repeating what Activision marketing departement made IW say a year ago ?

As for the issue of dedicated servers, it isn’t all that bad, because apparently, IW.NET will use dedicated servers. The problem is that there will be apparently no custom maps, and they will sell map packs (Something that is unnacceptable).

So a normal person in this situation steals what they wanted rather than paying for it? If you are going to get something out of the game worth the money being asked then pay and enjoy, if not just go and buy/play something else.

No-one cares what you do absolutezeroIQ.

Don’t play the game, don’t buy, don’t download it.

And while you’re at it, why don’t you do us all a favour and stop whinging about it like a little girl.

herp a durr hurr.

Oh and I mentioned Steam and D2D because they constitute a large slice of PC game sales, the exact numbers however are never released because Valve keep them to themselves.

Oh and its not a problem at all, I will be buying Bad Company 2 and 1943, I also wanted to buy and enjoy Modern Warfare 2, just like I did with every other CoD. Im not though, actually I might not even waste the bandwith d-loading it.

I just don’t really understand how playing another game instead of the one you thought was missing features is a bad thing.

Who said anything about Valve or Steam?

Compare joining a TF2 server to starting a game of Halo 3, the Halo matchmaking service takes a fucking age joining you up with other people, some of the time it fails on its arse aswell. CoD4 was pretty well hacked on the consoles aswell, even more so than the PC version, wallhacks, glitches and exploits can be easily dealth with on a server with a ban or through a simple VAC or Puinkbuster update. Those faults were allowed to fester on the PS3 version for quite sometime before a patch was released.

Also I can’t believe MOD are being looked apon as something bad.

I guess I am a relic if this is actually what the modern gamer actually thinks. Jesus its depressing.

It takes five minutes of Googling to find this information. If you’re too lazy to look… not my problem.

“However, I also think that there’s a slight case of snobbery on the side of the PC gamers here. Console gamers, including myself, enjoy hour after hour of amazing FPS gaming with a non-dedicated server setup, so does that mean that there’s something wrong with us?

Do we just like gaming on a worse off level than PC gamers?”

That is it in a nut shell. A lot of PC gamers have BHD Syndrome. They play of Too Expensive Rigs, and often feel better then their console brethern. Eleitism at its very core. I used to game on PC, but I got tired of upgrading to run something new. So, for what I needed to spend on video card, I went and bought a new Xboxone(yrs ago), got Mechassult, jumped online and never looked back. Now I even rent the dam things, meaning that I play more and pay less and never have to worry if my PC is rated high enough anymore.

As far as boycot, yea its a little extreme. To go around and organize hundreds of thousands of people into signing an online petition? Dumb. There is no gaurentte that said people will even buy the PC retail version to begin with. I wouldn’t sign it, if I buy this game it will on a console. But I have read a lot of signers that said they signed it, but are buying PS3. What sense does that make? that isn’t a msg to Acti, thats a website trying to get hits/visits and make a splash for themself. Don’t like what the game has to offer? Don’t buy it. Simple. Stop the flag waving and banner carrying, it just makes you look foolish.

Last thought, get the hell off of DICE for giving you exacxtly what your pissed IW isn’t. DICE will have dedicated servers, they have heard that people want them. So they have made it known they will have them. How can you get pissed at that? Because DICEs game doesn’t have the words Call Of Duty? Again Dumb. Esp when you consider that Battlefield and CoD are basicly the same intended audiance. Want a new fps squad based shooter with Dservers? Hello Bad Company 2.

You can’t. So saying “made up a fairly small slab of the game’s sales.” is something you have no idea about. No idea at all.

Im going to pirate the game play its single player and then delete it. I have better multiplayer games than CoD.

Also CoD would never ever have taken off were it not for the PC userbase getting behind the series when it very first started but don’t let that stop everyone following the money and blaming everything on pirates.