There was once a time, a very long time ago, some say in a totally different world, where you used to be able to walk into a gaming store, pick up a game, take it home, and play it with everything on that disc available to you right away. If you really wanted to, you could often skip playing the whole game to get to the good stuff with a few button presses, unlocking everything from the off. Remember when you used to be able to do that?
These days, it’s all changed. Unlocking all of the cars in, say, Need For Speed: The Run now requires a £7.99 unlock key purchase, as opposed to the good old time-honoured method of inputting a cheat code. And now you don’t even get everything that’s on the disc you’ve just purchased for 40 quid.
New crossover fighter Street Fighter X Tekken has angered a lot of people because of the work of some eager hackers, who have exploited a glitch in a copy of the game to reveal that the endings of 12 characters, and all of their data, are already present on the disc, but locked until further notice. The obvious conclusion to draw is that these characters will be unlockable at a later stage as pay-for DLC.
Capcom’s argument for this is that it allows all players to play with one another, even those who do not have the DLC, and that’s totally fine in the context of a later game update. Burnout Paradise‘s new DLC was heralded by a patch downloaded by all to ensure that everybody could play with everybody regardless of ownership of the new content – but actually buying it to use was just an unlock key away. This is absolutely fine if the content is new and developed after the disc has gone gold – industry lingo for having been made final – but if it’s in the game already and lurking for a release sometime down the line? Not cool.
If your characters are ready to go on day one, they should be available from day one. The twelve characters are, for the time being, exclusive to the Vita verson of SFxT, which launches later in the year, at which point they’ll become available as premium DLC for home consoles. You can be sure that, despite the words of Capcom community manager Brett Elston, there will be a ‘Super’ version somewhere down the line that has all the characters are unlocked from the get-go. All it takes is flicking an unlock switch in the game’s code and – ta-da – 12 new folk, ready from the off.
A number of commenters on various articles on this subject have already said they’re now no longer buying Street Fighter X Tekken as a result of this DLC ploy, and that’s a huge shame as the game is excellent. But if this is the message we need to put to Capcom regarding strategies like this, then so be it. Once upon a time, this sort of thing wouldn’t have flown in an industry which used to like giving you everything in a game for the cost of just a few button presses.
Source: Eurogamer
Coiled String
Sucks to be capcom they really can not work out how to squeeze that extra money out of punters with out it looking like a mugging.
Can not wait until they decide to charge for online tournament access. Only single player until then.
Wonder if Tekken will follow the same plan or will offer theirs with all characters unlocked honestly, by hard work.
I think I’ll wait for the Arcade edition, with all previous versions on it and all DLC..
ThisIsACoolTag
I double-dipped with the SFIV & SSFIV releases, and then bought Marvel vs Capcom 3 when it had dropped to £15 only to see an ultimate edition announced a few months later. I won’t be buying Street Fighter X Tekken.because I know that they’ll do it again.
I’m not interested in playing online, so I don’t have to have the latest edition.
bill
This article is silly. Its not like they are lying to us, with the dlc already on the disc but not available you still have the same choice to make. Is the game worth the money that they are asking for. Where the dlc is doesn’t matter. And as for the fact that its ready at launch , good. Are you seriously arguing that a big update is preferable. As to the good old days when everything on the disc was available, those were also the days when there was no dlc. Do you wish to return to a time when there was no dlc.
This whole article just sounds like old man grumpy about changing world. Damn you capcom being on the ball and doing the dlc at the same time as the rest of the game. How dare you plan in advance to have dlc and charge money for it.
William Usher
Sounds like damage control to me, Bill.
You also missed the point of the article and why people are angry:
When a game goes gold all the contents of the disc are ready, it means development is finished and it’s ready to be shipped off to manufacturing to end up on store shelves shortly thereafter. The Disc-Locked Content you’re defending was supposed to be in the game from the get-go. It was already finished. There was no reason why they couldn’t be on the main roster at this very minute with those 60 additional gems, 4 extra stages and 2 hidden bosses…yes, 2 hidden bosses.
We didn’t have a lot of DLC during the PS2 era and NO ONE complained. Games were great and arguably gave you MORE than what you paid for. Virtua Fighter EVO on the PS2 was an amazing game and all the content was unlocked by playing it, the same with Tekken 6 on the PS3. Despite reviews Mortal Kombat Armageddon had 60 characters plus more unlockable content than all $870 worth of Mass Effect 3 DLC combined.
Games during that era didn’t need DLC and why on earth would you want them to strip content from the main game to charge for it later? That’s asinine and counter-consumer friendly.
As shown off, the PS Vita will have these characters at launch they way it was intended. In other words, the 30% locked content is just main content that’s been locked, IT WAS NEVER DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT, it was not an expansion. All the locked characters are niche-fan favorites from previous games and most of all the Street Fighter characters that are locked are direct ports (with tweaks, mind you) from Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition.
There’s no way around it and no defending it. It’s a bad business practice that needs to end.