At the moment, every gaming blog I visit has an article up about Bioshock 2's DLC already being on the disc. This really isn't surprising ''news'' and what is more, every writer is trying to spin this as if 2K has done something hugely disgusting. It hasn't. They've done the same thing Namco did with Soul Calibur IV and Capcom did with Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5. It's gone with the best possible solution.

If developers, publishers or players want multiplayer DLC, there are four ways it can happen:
1) Be already on the disc, pay for an unlock code.
2) Be a forced download, pay for an unlock code.
3) Be entirely optional, split the playerbase since people who haven't downloaded the DLC can't play with the people who do have it.
4) Release it as an entirely free download for everyone.
Now not every developer is called Valve, so that's option #4 out. Of the other three, which is best? Splitting the players up? No, that could easily be the death of the multiplayer entirely. Of the other two, forcing a download or having it already on the disc? Well, having it already on the disc saves a lot of time both on the part of the developer/publisher and also on the part of the user. A forced download just means people sitting around grumbling at a slow-moving progress bar, for something they may not care to use themselves. Ergo, having it already on the disc is the best way to go. Am I saying it's good? No. But it's still the best method we have.


[About here is where I'd put an amusing image, if I could be arsed.]


And to the functionally brain dead "wahh why am I paying for something I already bought?" crowd: you haven't bought this content. When you paid your £40 for BioShock 2, you didn't even know this content existed. You were buying the single player that you knew to be there and you were buying the multiplayer that you knew to be there. You didn't know these other parts existed and you weren't handing over your money for them. If 2K had kept quiet about it you could have happily owned the game for months, years even, without ever knowing these things were on that disc. It's not like the disc physically takes up any more space on your shelf if there is locked content on it. If they hadn't included the DLC on the disc and made it an actual download instead, the only actual difference would be you'd be losing a little more space on your hard drive. The DLC isn't hurting you by sitting there on the disc, in fact it's saving you space and time.
If they had actually written on the box that there were these certain features in the game and it was only once you got home and put the disc in your console that a message flashed up saying you had to pay extra for things you had been lead to believe you had already bought, that would be misleading advertising, that would be wrong on every level and to every degree you can mention and yes, that would be utterly scummy. But that isn't what happened. They didn't write about this content on the back of the box. They didn't mention it in the press releases, demos and trailers ahead of the game's release. You didn't know it existed until after you had already bought the game. You didn't pay for single player + multiplayer + extras, you paid for single player + multiplayer. Now you're being asked to pay for the extras, if you would like them.

I'm not saying I like it, I'm not saying it's all super fun happy times. In a perfect world, this wouldn't happen; developers would put out everything they could at launch and then start beavering away on extra content to release as nice free DLC for everyone at a later date. They'd maintain their game with constant patches and they'd support the game freely for years to come.
We don't live in that world though. Valve's efforts with TF2 are as close as we've gotten and that is a rare, one-off example. In our world, DLC has to be either on the game disc, forced upon everyone, dividing the players, full of out of place and atmosphere-wrecking adverts or it's going to be well-made, well-implemented and balanced but cost as much as a small pony.
You're fucked either way. Don't act surprised when the throbbing members of DLC start tearing your arse apart because if you want DLC, you're going to get fucked by it one way or another.



All that said, fuck any BS2 content until they patch the broken bastard.