Fri, Aug 10, 2012 | 00:32 BST
Witcher dev: ‘DLC a service that shouldn’t be priced’
Witcher 2 developer CD Projekt RED has stressed to VG247 that DLC should be viewed as a ‘post-sale service’ and therefore shouldn’t see any money changing hands.
CD Projekt RED’s Konrad Tomaszkiewicz explained why gamers shouldn’t be paying for post-release digital content, given their bite sized nature, “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,” Tomaszkiewicz continued, “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.”
Stay tuned for our full CD Projekt RED interview soon.
Do you agree that DLC should be free if it offer limited value? Let us know below.
53 comments
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#51
Mineral4r7s
09/08/12, 4:06 pm
@50
Don’t forget Skyrim in your list of huge games.
#52
Gadzooks!
09/08/12, 4:40 pm
Erthazus, shut up you stupid child. You are talking utter shit.
You have never worked in development, that is a fact. Yet you continually try to sound like you know something about the subject. You don’t know anything about development, not a thing, and so your posts just reek of bullshit.
It’s very obvious, everyone can see it, your bluff is called time after time and you are made to look stupid. You get embarrassed at having been caught bullshitting and you sulk off without replying until the thread dies down.
You have no credibility child. Stop posting on this forum. Go to another site where people who don’t know what the fuck they are talking about won’t be able to call you out on your lies and wild guesses.
You don’t belong here, you friendless pretender.
#53
DSB
09/08/12, 8:38 pm
@48 Well, I actually agree with most of that.
Going back to my original point talking about “the age of irresponsibility”, DLC is the type of measure which may have a lot of genuine potential, but will often just end up as just another way of cutting corners for businesses who just don’t care about the product.
THQ are by far the worst in that regard. I haven’t bought a single piece of DLC for any of their games. They launch a 50 euro game, and then slam it with another 50 euros worth of useless trinkets, which are never ever going to be worth that money.
DLC can be a benefit to the medium as well as the bottom line, and Gearbox would also top my list of guys who know how to make it worth your while.
Ultimately you have the exact same problem when it comes to F2P, which Dave touched on in the CDP:R interview. It so easily becomes just another way to nickle and dime people, instead of actually selling something of value, and making it worth peoples time and money.
@50 Fair point, but Take Twos strategy of pouring a lot of time and money into their games also has a lot of people shaking their heads.
They may end up with far better produced games, and they may end up selling a lot, but ultimately Activision is matching GTA pound for pound with games that take slightly less than two years to make.
Which isn’t to say that Activision are right in doing that, but obviously it makes them darlings to anyone looking at the bottom line.
Take Two are in a pretty bad state at the moment.
I can’t speak for a lot of the games you mention, but GTA IV was considerably shorter than any that went before it, it’s not hard to add replayability to a racer (most racing games just make you run circuits backwards), and when it comes to games like Skyrim or Just Cause 2, the amount of content is obviously achieved through a number of shortcuts.
It’s not like you feel that they actually spent a lot of time scripting those quests, or writing the characters for something like Just Cause or Skyrim, is it?
That’s ultimately why I’ll never bitch about a game like Portal 2, being anywhere from 6-8 hours long, because what you’re getting is actually quality.
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