Epic’s justification behind their Gears of War 3 DLC is interesting to say the least

Matt Hawkins Contributing Writer, Video Games

Were you one of the many that put down $10 for the “Horde Command Pack”, only to discover the entire thing clocked in at 1.42 MBs, and thusly exclaimed “those sons of b*tches!”, then read on.

gow3 Epics justification behind their Gears of War 3 DLC is interesting to say the least

Such a reaction, to be honest, was completely justified. Because you just spent ten bucks to unlock content that was already on the disc. Now like it’s that much better, but whenever you pay for DLC and have to wait 30 minutes for some 3 GB download to finish, at least you get the feeling that you’re getting your money’s worth. Which isn’t necessary the case, but anyhow…

Kotaku spoke with Epic’s Rod Fergusson, and he had this to say: “”We’re not saying that everything on the disc is the product… The disc is another delivery mechanism.” True. But I think it’s assumed that when you pay X amount for Y, you’re putting money down for everything on Y. Excuse my backwards, 20th century thinking.

Fergusson is well aware of the annoyance and outrage, and states: “I can definitely see the counter-discussion.” Though the following explanation is the most intriguing: “We didn’t want to artificially pad it.”

Basically, he’s saying that pretty much everyone includes all their content on disc already, and all that extra stuff you download is simply hot air. That’s a rather bold statement that I supposed I can see as being true.

Though without any hard evidence, it still seems like a shallow excuse (though obviously, finger pointing on Epic’s part would be the dumbest thing they could possibly engage in).

He goes on to state that by putting everything up front, even if one does not utilize every single bit, not only ensures that there’s no large downloads (which is actually a benefit for those who have to deal with capped/throttled internet bandwidth) but that there’s no need for compatibility packs (every time a new character for Mortal Kombat came up, there was a separate, mandatory update to make sure those that have opted not to pick it up could still play nice with others, which I personally didn’t mind, but I can see others taking issue or at least finding it annoying).

There’s also the baseline argument of, look, for $60, you already got a ton of content as is, i.e. the main Gears of War 3 game. Which is true, but does that still justify asking for even more money after the fact? Guess that completely depends on how much of a fan you are of Epic and about a thousand other things.

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