Fans complain about Halo Wars DLC size, dev fires back

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Home #DLC

9:30 PM on 05.19.2009 | Brad Nicholson

27 comments

Fans complain about Halo Wars DLC size, dev fires back photo

#DLC #Halo #Xbox 360

Halo Wars downloadable expansion “Strategic Options” hit Xbox LIVE Marketplace earlier today. The content, which only adds three new game modes to the Halo Wars experience, is causing a bit of negative message board noise. Why? The DLC weighs in at ... a stunning 2 MB.

Before you ask: no, you didn’t pass through a wormhole. People still take issue to small downloadable content, even if it’s too big to be a simple unlock. (Think Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War file size if you need an estimate for an unlock.)

There is an interesting twist to all of this. Halo Wars lead designer, Dave Pottinger, fired back against accusations that the DLC was included on the disc.

“None of the DLC was on the disc when it shipped,” Pottinger said via the official Halo Wars message board. “The game modes are a small download because they are rules.”

“There is some new content, but it’s obviously a different type of content compared to a map. Also, the recent patch added a bunch of miss support/engine groundwork for both DLCs.”

So, there you go Halo Wars fans. It’s safe to quit frothing now. You only spent 10 dollars on rules and prep.

Continue reading: More Xbox 360 stories

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27 comments | showing # 1 to 27

Catmurderer

How is there DLC... if they dont exist?

Shirley Temple

This is the same shit Capcom pulled with Resident Evil 5. They're charging you for patches. Not DLC. Or did they forget that DLC stands for Downloadable CONTENT, not Downloadable Text File.

Milestailsprowe

DLC creators get greedy to many times but its halo what other franchise charges 15$ for 3 maps?

D-Nez

The annoying part is that people will pay for it. Despite it being uncool to admit it, I like Halo. However I couldn't support this no matter how much I wanted it.

Krow

Heh. Rules.

saxiums

Killzone 2 was that pricing point

Dexter345

Yeah, I don't understand what people don't get about that. It's not like they added character models, maps, textures, music, or anything that actually takes up a ton of space. It's rules, people.

manasteel88

ever since the studio got canned...no good news has come from Halo Wars

Volomon

Can still be an unlock idiot, whos the say the space on the Xbox360 wasn't so limited that they had to put some new networking code down or anything else that would normally come with a PC or PS3 product.

Volomon

@Dexter345 People are pissed because file size shows how much work they actually did to charge. I mean 1/6 the cost for 1/100 of the effort? Doesn't make sense to me.

theredpepperofdoom

oh, so the DLC wasn't on the disc so it gets to be 10 bucks?
No, sir. No. Microsoft has corrupted your mind. The red pill may help, but perhaps not. It's risky. There is still time to save yourself. There is still time.

Dexter345

@Volomon: I wasn't aware we measure how much work somebody puts into something (or quality, for that matter) by file size now. Hang on while I make a 1,000,000 x 1,000,000 pixel BMP, entirely fuchsia. It'll be huge! I could charge tons for it.

GunSlap

Well the price still obviously sucks but the dev makes a good point. Code is very small, it takes a huge amount of code to take up a lot of space. What usually takes up so much space is all the supporting media files. Things like textures and sound files can be horrendous in comparison.

For a good example of just how much space textures take up, try out the entirely procedural (generated on the fly) game kkrieger. The entire game is 96 kilobytes! That's becuase the entire games content is created on the fly, textures sounds and all (and it looks pretty darn good for 96k my friends).

http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger

Volomon

@Dexter345 I think most of us know the difference between a high rez texture and a huge blank BMP. That's just common sense for the rest of us Dexter.

If two people make a game and they are the same genre. We know it takes more people, work, effort and money to fill more discs. When you have a 2mb project that was probably 5 people. Ya there is a difference.

Spectreman

* Rules must be free. Is the rule.

DeusPayne

Dex, wasn't IdSoftware working on something like that, touting it as the next big thing in graphics. Until progressive rendering came along and was able to do the same in a fraction of the size. And more on point... if you want the new rule set, buy it. If not, don't. If you're really worried about being bled dry by a developer/publisher, perhaps Halo isn't the franchise for you. But there are plenty of people who view this as $10 well spent, and THEY will fund further 'DLC'.

GunSlap

Oh and if you can't/don't want to try and play the game, just watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VqzjafwCNA

Yes, that entire game is 96k!

Chronic Logic

I don't care if it's on the disc or not, 10 dollars is too much for three new modes and a couple of maps.

Usedtabe

@Chronic Logic: What maps? The only thing you get with this is the 3 new modes.

Guncannon

Think of how popular Halo 3 would be if "rules" were DLC along with maps:

Team Rockets: 100 points
MLG: 300 points (because you need to prove your 1337ness by paying)
Low Gravity: 500 points ("We needed a lot of prep code to make this mode possible")

StickFlick

also lets not forget that in Halo 3 you can modify the "rules" and make your own gameplay modes. but just cant share them freely online and only with friends. still I dont see why halo wars devs decided to skip that alltogether and make it so you have to pay for the rule changes when they could have coded it in.

Maybe the option to make your own rules will be DLC in the future.

"Oh yeah, you can make your own rules now like in halo 3. 10 bucks to do it btw"

Emrah

Guys, you can't make an assumption on the work that has gone into a DLC based on its size. Programming is programming, and executable sizes may be very small. If ppl continue to be like that, they'll just put junk stuff into the dlc (lorem ipsum style) so it looks big enough to satisfy people.

For what it is worth, it might have taken hundreds of hours of playtesting and tweaking to get those rules to work..

Still, it could have been free.

xenon

Please, someone explain to me: what's the difference between DLC which unlocks stuff already on the disc and stripping content from a completed game and releasing it later as DLC? Is the second option less of a rip-off (or less questionable anyway)? I really don't think so.

Vitamin Awesome

I would like to remind people that .kkrieger is only 96k in file size, which shows how much you can do with so little. 2 megs of text is actually pretty big.

Are you really getting cheated because you have to pay for extras? Some DLC tactics disgust me (Five dollar Vader/yoda, I'm glaring at you), but to lump everything with that is pretty harsh. Nuts to people bashing companies wanting make money. Heaven forbid they do that.

hjd uk

Sigh.

Unlock: Data that is already on disk but unacessible due to code restrictions, you download an authentication code to gain access to content. e.g Dath Vader in SC4 (on disk but inaccessible).

DLC : new content unavailable on the orignal disk. E.g a new Map, a new avatar or other new game-data.

In this case the DLC was some scripts and possibly an image or two meaning the size was small - doesnt mean it can be an unlock because it was never on the original disk image.

Holyetheline

Got a problem with this DLC? Easiest resolution is to not purchase.

Calamansi

DLC Definitely Losing Customers.

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