38 Studios has attempted to justify the content being gated behind an online pass in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. When asked why an entire quest line was being held to ransom in exchange for new sales, the developer said it was originally planned as paid DLC.
"The House of Valor content is, for all intents and purposes, our first DLC content," said community manager Muse. "Instead of holding onto it for a month or more and charging everyone for it later, we opted to give it to those who purchase the game new for free."
This is a pretty smart move on the part of 38 Studios. Using the already questionable tactic of holding back content for paid DLC in order to make the more questionable tactic of online passes look almost heroic is a master stroke of PR genius. I have to applaud that.
It's a complex situation though, I grant you that. Giving away DLC is more akin to rewarding new customers rather than punishing used ones, something I've actively encouraged. Still, one can then argue if it's really a "gift" when it could have been in the game originally and was taken out to sell at a price. It certainly bears a lot more thought than it looked like it deserved, given the clumsy presentation of the pass found within the game's box.
In any case, I maintain that having this pass as the first thing a customer sees really sends the wrong message about how confident a publisher is that it won't be traded into GameStop within a week. Maybe next time, don't have a game box that's nothing but the disc, the EULA, and a "Please don't trade me in" flyer.
Contest:
5:45 PM on 01.27.2012 | 
The demo only gives you a hint about it while completing the mission with the injured Fae.
I'm waiting, a few more hours/days it will be fun.
Naughty Dog and others should take note.
It's no different than the Mass Effect 2 Cerberus Network, where characters and quests were clearly removed from the game and created with development time and money before the product went gold, or Resident Evil 5's online versus mode, which falls into the same category. The first was hidden behind an online pass, the second was hidden behind a premium download. Both are anti consumer. Your justification is irrelevant.
tl;dr i'm still not buying your fucking game
also this still punishes the non online havers.
To me this DLC seems fine though. I think the worst type of DLC is quests or storylines that are should be part of the main quest and deal with major aspects of the plot.
Although, people without an internet connection to their gaming device get screwed in... oh wait they pretty much get screwed anyway.
I'll do without the "day one DLC." If I really have to know whatever happens during those quests, I'll watch it on YouTube or read a walkthrough.
However, this news puts a bad taste in my mouth regarding the developer. That's exactly what a developer should do just before they launch a new IP. Sounds like a great idea.
Its also insane double speak. By the very nature of the beast, locking single player content creates DLC, in that you will have to purchase the content even if that content is attached to a pass if you are currently locked out of it. Saying "it was DLC that we decided to give out for free with new purchases" does not make any tangible difference in how the situation plays out, other than how it is perceived.
I am curious as to how many people will fall for such strange PR wizardry.
That seems awfully vague. What the shit do you mean?
Well I'm glad you asked. I am saying that the act of moving what would have been DLC into the final retail release version creates locked single player content; creates the online pass. What it was is immaterial, what it is is what matters. You can use an online pass to create DLC, but you cannot use DLC to create an online pass when the game has not so much as seen its own release.
My rule of thumb is basically the following: "If I can't get ALL the base 1000 gamerscore or base trophies unless I buy/activate the online pass then you are ripping me off." I could be wrong but I don't think any of this has to do with the base achievements/trophies. Can anyone confirm this?
My rule of thumb is basically the following: "If I can't get ALL the base 1000 gamerscore or base trophies unless I buy/activate the online pass then you are ripping me off." I could be wrong but I don't think any of this has to do with the base achievements/trophies. Can anyone confirm this?
(because eventually many games aren't carried in stores as "new" and are hard to find except as used)
yeah plenty of games have done this. DA:O, DA2, Rage, Bulletstorm, Arkham City, Mass Effect 2, and probably a few more.
I'm actually curious why it seemed like nobody cared about it until Arkham City.
Honestly, wouldn't be surprised if EA wrote, and passed it off to 38 Studios. Hope this is a move that ultimately benefits the developers, because I doubt they would of gotten away with this if another smaller publisher was handling this game.
You know it's also a bit odd because I remember reading somewhere that the devs themselves said the game had hundreds of hours of content, so is it not worth keeping? Or maybe this was done with best intentions, just not properly executed.
I've bought games with online passes new before. Without an internet connection I couldn't redeem the content. Also when I brought that game to a friend's house who has xbox live, we couldn't play unless we purchased an extra 10 dollars for the game I paid 60 dollars for. If a family member wanted to play on a different gamertag or if I wanted to lend the game to a friend, I'm being lumped in the same group as "used game buying scum." Years from now these games will gimped because their download servers will be down, and if other people want to buy that game but it is too old to find any used copies, then they have no options.
All of these problems I've been complaining about still happen even though I bought that game new. Sorry, but your advice didn't help, but thanks for the generalizations.
A strong used market is a sign of a strong new market, and a used market that is as large as the used games market only came about because of genuine market demand for it.
The semantics are exactly the issue. They didn't use the wrong terminology, they wrapped the same old thing in terminology that didn't seem so bad.
Remove the semantics from top to bottom, as you suggest we should do, and you end up with locked final version content. Why they did it, or what this stuff was originally planned as is immaterial, at the end of the day you have day 1 single player content being locked behind a pass, which others can purchase. In this case, this "DLC" became an online pass kind of scenario, and that is what we are left with.
They could have said "we were never going to release this stuff, but we decided to give it to people who buy new free of charge" and the situation would have been no different. The semantics are working in their favor, because it makes it seem reasonable. And I hope to never see the day that locked day 1 content in any form is seen as reasonable.
This just sounds more like convenient PR damage control / spin to me. They've been teasing 6 factions for quite a while, and only now it's revealed one of them was never really intended to be on the disk? Even if that's true it paints a very bleak picture of DLC and how we've always suspected devs are just withholding content already planned well in advance of the game going gold.
Some quick timestamping:
The Reckoning forum community seemed to already know there was going to be 6 factions back in early July last year.
http://bit.ly/yhsKeg
posted 7/8/11: When community member flamechamp asks what else could the devs reveal, community member Ellyssi replies "the six factions in the game we can interact with"
Devs officially confirmed six factions in the forums 8/10/11.
http://bit.ly/z2M55o
posted 8/10/11: "The main quest and each of the six factions contains a mostly-linear narrative you can follow"
The House of Valor apparently can be found in the GamesCom 2011 demo (an event which ran Aug 17th - 21st)
http://bit.ly/AgCkzS
posted 9/24/11: speculating what the 6th unrevealed faction might be, community member flamechamp posts, "I recall though, in the Gamescom demo in the Deytre Region, there is a huge structure on the world map and its called 'House of Valor.' Maybe thats the 6th faction."
That pretty much seals it for me. There's no way this content was intended to be DLC all along. Although even without the awesome evidence you posted, it should be clear that this content was withheld from the disk by the fact that it is available day 1.
It's just like how some people are gullible enough to think that Arkham City's catwoman missions weren't left off of the disc, even though she was hyped and playable a long time before the game was even finished.
So what they're basically saying is that they originally planned to charge customers extra for content that was already on the disc but now only those that buy used will have to pay to unlock content that is already on the disc............. man this gen sometimes.
After all, an online pass is something that Skyrim, Fallout 3/New Vegas or the Fable games didn't have, an obvious oversight on their developers/publishers' parts, possibly a result of rushing games out to market without enough testing, leaving it up to the consumers to demonstrate the need for online passes with their new copies of the game...somehow, and it now falls to EA to rectify this slight.
im sorry, but why is there no sarcasm button on the net yet?
but idiots will continue to eat up this garbage as long as the pubs and devs feed it to them. have fun with overpriced map packs and on-disc/day 1 dlc suckers.
I'm confused, are you a sheep or a shill? Either way, you're adorable. Is that a red tag on your ear... Yes it is. Get back in the barn bitch, before your master sees you.
A little transparency, goes along way, and seeing how poorly some of the companies are treating their player base really bugs, me. Luckily there are so many games that come out that it's not really a big deal to miss one of them.
I simply hate the Online pass idea, it's a bad move and it's going to basically make every game you own obsolete 3 - 5 years. So many games are not even fun to rent, anymore that I find myself becoming really jaded and angry about this and flat out refuse to buy a single player game with an onlne pass.
Ofcourse this is my opinion, but I'm an adult and used to buy lots of games, mark my words this is going to kill the game market this year.