Hello there, I just had a rather serious thought about the season passes and the problem as a whole most noticeable for new and upcoming games this year that some of them haven't even come out yet or weren't even properly presented to the public and it seems to be getting a tad bit out of hand recently. So I'll just start with the most recent one that is still fresh and hot, it's the massive failure called Destiny. It's more than obvious the game was dumbed down and some of the content from the game was artificially and on someones command quite clearly removed from the game in order to be able to sell it as a season pass content for the customer who is willing to pay an "extra" dollar for a and I must quote this "for an ultimate destiny experience". Now to the fun part, as you maybe all know by now, there has been a post on reedit discussing the bug after the latest patch that revealed some of the missions that weren't supposed to be visible to a regular folk. Activision/bungie responed to that leak here http://www.vg247.com/2014/09/29/bungie-responds-to-destiny-expansion-content-leak/ It's merely marketing and corporate response, so nothing really interesting or amusing. What is really interesting is the fact that they were selling the game in some of the editions, I can't remember which was which or the names of the editions, but basically there were two editions that included this Destiny Expansion Pass, which by itself it costs 35 dollars. That's absolutely insane if you ask me. Get this, you are buying a game that is priced at a standard 59.99 $ , they quite simply cut out the content from the game and sell it to you for additional 35 $ dollars. And whats worse, people actually bought this, they even preordered it !!! That's even more insane. I have no idea who started all this preorder nonsense about not only preordering games but also preordering season passes, but I can tell you for sure this won't end well for the gamer/paying customer and it most certainly wasn't started by the regular gamers and folk that pay for and play these games. Well now onto some other games or more more accurately speaking the developers/publishers I've noticed, that were using this clever season pass technique. Iam not going to rant about how some of these games are total and utter failures and how some of them didn't even fulfil any of their own promises to begin with and how ridiculously they were overhyped, but that's for another discussion. I'll start with Watch Dogs, the game has a season pass, it's a game made and distributed by ubisoft. The watch dogs season pass is priced at 19.99 and was available to even preorder before the game was even released !! Next game on this list is Titanfall, a game made by respawn and published by EA, the season pass for that game is priced at even higher price at 24.99 and was announced before the game came out like the above mentioned watch dogs seasons pass. Far Cry 4 is the next game on this ridiculously long list, the game is made and published by ubisoft and the season pass was announced waaaaay too soon, it was announced right when the game itself was announced. They event went futher with this. The season pass for this game can't be purchased separately, but can be purchased as a gold bundle with fc4 base game and it's priced currently on uplay at 79.99 €. That's absolutely crazy !!!! They even do the marketing trick with cutting the price artificially by 10 € so people might think it's actually quite a bargain. What an absolute an utter nonsense. Next game on this list is, yep you might have guessed it already, it's assassins creed Unity, so it's basically and exactly the same thing as with far cry 4. It's absolutely crazy I know. Bear in mind I named 4 games so far in this list and 3 of those are UBISOFT games that are developed and published/distributed by UBISOFT themselves. That's absolutely mad. Iam not even going to talk about the game called crew, because it's pretty much identical as with other ubisoft titles that are going to be released this year. Ok to the next game on this list, it's the game by made by monolith, a highly talented studio I might add and the game is published by warner brothers games, the game is called Middle-earth The Shadow of Mordor. The game price is not that high, at least not for us, the PC folk, it usually goes around 29.99 € , even from the mortar shop, but what really staggers me is the price for the season pass for this game is 24.99 €, that's almost the price for the base game itself. Isn't this just getting more and more ridiculous. Granted the base game isn't so overpriced compared to the ubisoft or ea titles but what's more worrying is the fact that the season pass itself is almost the same price as the base game !!! That's totally unacceptable. Allright, to the next game, it's called The Evil Within, a game that I am very excited for, it's a game developed by Tango Gameworks (shinji mikami is behind this game) and is published via our beloved bethesda. So the game is quite reasonably priced at 29.99 € for PC from a mortar store but the game has a season pass priced at 19.99 €, that's more than a half of the price of the base game. The price for this package is more than reasonable compared to the other ones, but still, we shouldn't be even discussing this matter, there is no need for these ridiculously overpriced season passes that are announced even before the games initial release and sometimes they're announced with the game reveal. But I digress a bit. The next game is a lovely looking game called Lords Of The Fallen, a game made by a rather unknown game developement studio from germany Deck13 Interactive in collaboration with Polish studio CI Games, we all know and are in a love/hate relationship with. The game is published by Square Enix in europe. The game itself is priced at 39.99 € in retail shops but the season pass is still not available, it seems like it's inevitable it will be announced before the games official release by the end of this month. Ok, so I listed 8 games, 4 of which were titles made and published by ubisoft, you can see where Iam going with this. 1 game was published by ea and the other games were published by square enix and bethesda and one by activision. Bear in mind all these 8 games were released and are going to be released in next few months of this year. Now a quite serious question comes to mind after I listed the games and dissected their atrorcious policies on season passes issue. Why is this even a real thing? Surely the gamers/ paying customers didn't wish for this or wanted something like this in the first place, then why is it here I ask you? What are these companies trying to accomplish with this, other than grab some easy cash without a single piece of effort or hard work? This needs to stop, and it needs to go away as soon as possible and we as gamers, the majority that love games and care about them can make it go away by not buying into this bull**** with not supporting any of these ridiculously shameless and audacious policies from big corporate heads of various publishing companies. Simply do not preorder/buy this season pass content. Ugh, sorry for the long text or for the mistakes I made along the way. I just needed to blow off some steam by writing this and possibly engage some of you in a worthwile discussion. Iam looking forward to the replies, thank you for the space to express my opinion on this quite serious matter.
I'm sorry to say this but gamers are some of the dumbest customers on earth, that's why pulling such practices works with gamers but would never fly in film or music industry.
You haven't mentioned Battlefield's premium thing. Which is as expensive as the game, offering you 12 to 16 new maps, new (and op) weapons, and lots of crap to get people away from really looking at how the game plays... And I admit it, I'm stupid enough to buy them. But why do I do that? Preorder bonuses, as well as simply saving money, there's usually a bit of a discount on the expansion packs compared to buy them one by one. Also, there's double XP weekends, but only for premium accounts. The part with taking out stuff from the original game to sell it seperately already happened with AC2, where you could already see 4 chapters missing from the 20+ in there when trying to go through that strange genetic database (can't remember what it's called anymore), realised it while playing with my g/f. Already some years ago... The only option? Not to buy such games. Or buy them on discount, so you say $59.99 for everything alltogether. Or wait for discounts on "goty" editions, and paying $19.99 for all that stuff. Or, if you want to play games right away, you need to be ready to invest money. That's how I see the situation, and there's little to chose wheather we, as customers, are okay with it. The "manufacturer" controls the market, so to say, and we only have the option to not buy, if we are not okay with it...
That's not true, if anything, most of the true gamers are highly intelligent people, unlike some of the drones that are into movies or modern music. Well Iam kind of resposnible too, I bought premium for bf3, but I bought it because I was promised things, things that have never been delivered and I've been folled twice with bf4 premium aswell, that means Iam not even going to buy bf hardline or any of their next crap battlefield games. You're talking abou ac II, that game is what, 6 years old ? Iam talking about this year, it's gotten really out of hand lately, games are not even released or even announced and we hear about these season passes before the base game is even announced. That's absolutely crazy.
He is to a certain extent right. We keep gobbling EA's bloatware every year. Altough downright calling gamers more intelligent than any other group of people is just stupid.
And what can you do to change that? For instance EA are doing similar thing with origin what valve did with steam and ubisoft are doing with uplay, although steam is unparalleled compared to those crap malware/bloatware programs from ea and ubisoft. I didn't call gamers more intelligent than any other group, I just compared the true gamer to the average modern movie/music drone. Thats different.
I first got infuriated by this with Bioshock: Infinite. I f*cking hate this. Give me a finished product for my money. Blizz do this right. I don't care if people hate them or whatever. But you buy a Blizz game, be it good or bad, they will release constant patches for their games, sometimes adding content, most of the time just balancing jobbies. Then, after a period of time, they'll release an expansion with new content, new classes, new modes etc. THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE!!!! Not even sorry about the caps. All the DLC crap needs to die.
Omfg they're just farming people.. ****ing sick if you think about it right? But maybe they just want to release content over time so... maybe that's why they've come up with this "season pass" idea, maybe it's not such a bad idea after all then? Because if you're a programmer you want to get paid right? But then again there's the issue that WHY DON'T YOU RELEASE THESE THINGS WITH THE GAME DIRECTLY? HELLOO?? ARE YOU JUST HERE TO MILK US? .... Some grand plan by the corporation right. Yeah I totally agree with eclap lol, this dlc crap is just ****ing stupid. Better release expansions in bigger scales than release some small crappy DLCs that cost 10€ each lol. End sum is you pay 100€ for a game that should've been 50€ in the first place. Rofl yeah exactly, it's ****ing sick. And actually to add to premium, I think it's a good deal you get all the expansions for free, at least It's been for me, I can't be arsed buying each and everyone of them + I got it for pretty cheap so better for me.
Thing is, if Blizzard offered on release of D3 or any of their game a "season pass" for say £50, I'd buy it. Because I know I would get real support. Sometimes bad, but most of the time good. When I see a season pass for a shooter, that adds silly maps for online MP, makes me sick. I bought premium for both bf3 and bf4, but I knew I was getting a fair discount on these DLCs doing it this way. And honestly, the price of premium for bf4 is the price of the season pass of Shadow of Mordor, but it offers countless hours of fun, unlike the very shallow Shadow of Mordor experience.
Indeed, I agree with everything you wrote there. Blizzard are very different. I bought starcraft II and the heart of swarm datadisc and I had a blast ! I loved the game and I still do. You get a pretty big bang for your money and they constantly release massive updates and patches to fix and balance the game. Also valve and rockstar are doing the same, they release a great chunk of t he main game and they release updates and dlc's most of the time for free. What about naughty dog, they are an awesome game developement company too. But I went a bit offtopic there, I apologize. What I meant to say was you're absolutely right, this dlc thing is a plague of the modern gaming, it needs to vanish or dissolve immediatelly, because this thing with dlcs and season passes is getting massively out of hand.
Hear, hear it's a freaking scam, all they care is the money, they don't really give a flying fudge about the gamer, all that is important for them are sales and money from it.
Granted, battlefield premium for both bf3 and bf4 offered a discount for future map packs but I don't think it offered as much as they promised when they announced the service. I bought both premium services when they were announced but that's because Iam a fan of the series and I play the game on almost daily basis and I've had a good discount on bf3 and bf4 premium aswell, when I bought it as a bundle package. But Iam not going to bother picking up hardline anytimes soon after what happened to bf4, the game was in a ridiculous state almost an entire year...And try and read this. http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/forum/threadview/2979150494047823962/ It's a post about hardline preorders and all this free to play battlepack and xp boosts bull**** that was introduced in the game with bf4.
I didn't buy bf3 premium until the last DLC came out. seeing what it offered, I bought bf4 + premium on release. I was happy with that purchase. Some might not be. it's highly individual.
That was a good move, but personally if I could I would never buy premium for bf4 again if I had a chance, it's mainly due to various reasons. I bought it because I had a very good discount on the bf4+premium package and with that in mind I knew that it could only get better than bf3 premium, but sadly it didn't, bf4 was even worse than bf3 premium. It offered nothing more than a one gold battlepack per month and some xp boost events and some random crap I never wanted, like a new knife or some other stupid thing like a camo or paint. Anyway, what are your thoughts on bf hardline so far? have you played the beta?
Thats a wise choice, me neither, I won't be touching that thing with a 10 foot long pole. I personally like bf3 more than that bugfest called bf4, but recently I've been playing moh warfighter a bit more and it's fun, the servers are mildly populated and the game is a blast. I know we went a bit offtopic here, so I'll try to be on topic as most as I can, but I have to ask you, how is the gaming gtx 970 from msi performing on bf4 for you?
I hate DLCs, pre-order bonus , especific items if you buy the game at a reseller , early access games , all this kind of thing. But what we can do? Dont buy the game and speak badly about the company , but we love games , so we buy games , . I really want the old times you bought a game and a HUGE expansion after it , but I think it will never be back.
Well preorder bonus is something quite different, if you think about it, it's mainly for the different retailers or internet shops to compete with each other over who gets the most copies of the game sold on the market. It's usually some crap like gift cards or other non important marketing nonsense and some time it's some kind of little dlc or skin for a character. That's actually not bothering me at all, what bothers me the most are these ridiculously overpriced season passes that are the cancer of the gaming industry and it's been getting out of hand pretty fast lately. Old times will never be back, I rememeber the times when I bought an original game called sudden strike and had a blast playing through the singleplayer campaign, after a year or so came out this great expansion pack for quarter the price of the original game and I had another 10 or 15 more hours of sp campaign from it. These kind of games are not even made anymore, everything is aimed towards casual console gamer that are willing to pay and preorder season pass like if their lives were to depend on it and they couldn't live without it. It's a sad state of affairs allright.
Well the discussion wasn't as lenghty as I hoped it would be, oh well...I will try and post this on different forums too, to hear more peoples opinions on this.
