Hello everyone...
I believe Dying Light developers Techland has started a trend that will soon take effect on the gaming industry with their decision to increase the price of the Season Pass. When Dying Light Season Pass was announced, it was sold for $20. But after a while the developers now planned to charge $30 for the season pass. When this was announced, I thought it was a marketing tactic to get players to buy the Season Pass before the price increase but I didn’t think that other game developers might follow the same tradition.
I was wrong. Today, Bethesda announced that Fallout 4 Season Pass will get a price increase from $29.99 to $49.99 on March 1. And I fear that many publishers will do that in the future to exploit gamers to buy their Season Pass early.
But before we delve into the subject lets have a look at what Fallout 4's Season Pass offers, shall we?
We have the Automatron dlc which adds a Robot Companion for the game where you can customize him by adding mods to him. This sounds awesome at first until you realize that it will cost you $10. Ten Dollars for a Companion? I have seen modders do crazier stuff and Companions for free and Bethesda wants to charge us $10 for that?
Ok, what else does the Season Pass have? Ah, it has Wasteland Workshop dlc, hmm sounds good. So what does it do? You design cages for capturing creatures like Deathclaws and enemies to see them fight each other. Seriously? A cage? that is what you are going to give me? A $5 cage? So instead of giving us story content like the usual, you give us cages and customize-able Robots? Something that modders can easily do for free.
The only thing that looks worthy in the Season Pass is Far Harbor Expantion but even that looks way overpriced. 25$ for an expansion seems a bit steep in my opinion considering other games like The Witcher 3 have two major expansions for the same price. None of this feels worthy the price of Admission which will be increased to a stupidly high $50 price tag.
We have to stand against this before it gets out of hand and not support the publishers/developers who do that.Remember when DLC started, it was a simple idea to add more content to the games for a reasonable price but look at what happened later on, developers like EA/Ubisoft and Activision started abusing this and started selling overpriced DLC. And now with this, you can be sure that they will exploit it. Lets not forget the Pre-Order content that is exclusive to each retailer while we are at it too. Something that is already complete and should be in the game is exclusive to Pre ordering. Like Arkham Knight/Mass Effect 3 dlc which was important to the main story and many more.
I get the feeling that Ubisoft will do that with The Division and then you start seeing this more and more every day, they will say the expansion has gotten bigger and it could be Standalone title. And worst of it all is that people will believe and support them and say games are expensive to make. Even if they are expensive to make, that doesn’t give them the right to exploit us like this. Season Passes nowadays cost almost as much as the game. With games like Battlefront and COD have a $50 Season Pass, there is no way of knowing if they will increase the price or not and lie to us by saying it worth it and that it has more content than the main game.
Some will say you are not forced to buy it, but look at the sorry state of many games today. Destiny was incomplete and they had the nerve to charge us $80 for expansions that wasn’t even worth the price, the game itself wasn’t worth the price and all above all that, we are treated with Microtransactions for things that could and should have been unlockables in the games. The same for Battlefront, it lacked content and we have EA charging $50 for the Season Pass. Or Arkham Knight's Season Pass, i dont think anyone can defend that Piece of overpriced crap that they call DLC.
And what pissed me off even more is the way Bethesda ended their post about the dlc by saying "This is our way of saying thanks to all our loyal fans who have believed in us and supported us over the years". That's how you thank your fans Bethesda? By increasing the Season Pass price? That is our reward, eh? You just lost a loyal fan.
Please everyone, do not support any more of the publishers exploitative practices and lets us speak with our wallets and tell them we are not supporting your greed. And if you Agree/disagree with me, sound off in the comments.
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Oh god, that's just ugly. One thing i know some games have good season pass like Witcher 3, Driveclub and other games i enjoy. But some other like Ubisoft, EA and Activision announced their season pass are always expensive. Yes, gamer can buy season pass to get these things for free without paying, but this just plain ugly. I know next gen going to make developers hard to develop the game, but making PR excuse...... That's something i turn away and not listen this nonsense. For example, Bloodborne is full game and excellent expansion pack same goes to Witcher 3. I will say this, stop and talk to the publisher that we don't want this. But if they don't listen, then they will face some resistance.
It reinforces the scammy nature of Season Passes. What i will say in defence of Dying Light is The Following is pretty fairly priced for the content offer. Can't say the same about Fallout 4's pass
Then let us hope Obsidian doesn't sh*t the bed with their supposed Fallout.. Sigh, I was looking forward to DLC as well but looks like I'd rather wait until the ultimate-edition comes out so I can trade in my current disc and get the full package :/
You're wrong about both of the first pieces of DLC. I don't think you read much into them.
The robot DLC doesn't just give you a companion. It populates the world with a bunch of new robots and robot types, and you destroy them to gather up "hundreds" of different parts to customize your own robot. It's not just a companion.
Wasteland Workshop does allow you to build cages and tame creatures, yes. It also comes with a boatload of new things to build for your settlements, including nixie tube lighting.
I get the point that you're trying to make, and fair enough, this could become a trend. But if you're going to make a point at least provide all the facts.
One thing I will say in defence of Bethesda is that they could have easily made all future content separate from the season pass. Gearbox did it with Borderlands 2. Instead, Bethesda is giving gamers a fair amount of time to purchase the pass at the original price to get all the content that wasn't originally planned/included.
You may have your point, but please, remove that gif, is pretty stupid, really.