Capcom Decides On-Disc DLC Might Not Be Such A Good Idea After All
People were mad when they found out that Street Fighter X Tekken had 12 finished characters on the disc for the game that could only be accessed as paid DLC. They were furious when a spokesperson for the company said that “there is effectively no distinction” between DLC being on the disc and DLC being downloaded from the internet. Now it appears that Capcom is backpedaling as fast as they can, saying that they are “re-evaluating” on-disc DLC.
Now, you might be thinking “Why is on-disc DLC bad? Don’t many games have day one DLC anyway?” Well, it’s true that many games have day one DLC, but it has to come down to the delivery system for it. When Mass Effect 3 came out, it had the “From The Ashes” DLC on day one. EA and Bioware defended the DLC by saying that the content was developed after the game code had been submitted to the ESRB for review. Thus, there was no way for them to put it on the disc unless they re-sent the entire code, which would have probably delayed the game for another few months.
By having on-disc DLC, that code for those characters would have had to have been on the disc when the game was submitted to the ESRB for review. Had the code been added into the game after receiving its rating, the rating that Street Fighter X Tekken would have been void, and the game would have had to be re-reviewed by the ESRB to gain a rating. With this damning evidence, it’s no wonder people were pissed off at Capcom. Here is a blatant example of withholding content and releasing it to earn more money, essentially double-charging the players. However, though the company is “re-evaluating” it’s on-disc DLC policy, don’t expect it to change anytime soon. Senior VP Christian Svensson admitted that titles already in development, like Dragon’s Dogma, are still going to include on-disc DLC, because the decision “was made at the beginning of the game’s development” to include it. Despicable.
