Nobody said you can't argue. Just don't blame others when you look funny for arguing "to fuck" doesn't mean to engage in sexual intercourse.
And I will tell you once again, because apparently your reading skill is either low or you didn't bother to read what I said. Expansion pack and add-on are related to the size. DLC is related to how is distributed. It's available on Steam? Yes, then it's a fucking DLC. It's available from a disc? Then it's fucking extra content that comes from a disc. Whether it is an expansion pack or add-on, it does not matter, as that has no fucking relevance to the way it is distributed.
How is exactly is the method of distribution related to the size? And for crying out loud, Halo had that exact map pack you are talking about in a physical form too. Yes, a fucking disc that added the same thing as the downloadable thing. Woot? Halo had physical discs with map packs? Yes, yes it had, and no, in that case, they were just map packs, not DLC, because you were not downloading them.

I've been trying to explain to people for a while that extra content distributed via an online platform is always classified as DLC because it is downloaded. Whether it is an expansion pack or a small add-on like the Horse Armor, it does not matter. Both are downloaded, both are content? What's the difference? Take Complete Editions for example that have every extra content on the disc. It's not a code that gives me the extra content online. The content is on the disc, thus it is not DLC because you don't download it.
Alternatively, people have a very half-asses idea what an expansion pack is. Everyone imagines this big huge extra adventure or story that adds to the main game, but expansion pack can also be a group of these smaller add-ons that combined give enough content as to what those old school expansion pack offers. If it offers just as much, isn't it an expansion pack, in spite of being a group of smaller add-ons?
Most people don't think about this, and in most cases they defend their beliefs like fanatic religious idiots, as if their opinions are the law.

No idea if what Ubisoft allegedly says is actually true or not, but all I do know for sure is what my own thoughts and feelings are about DLC and microtransactions from the perspective of how it affects me personally and how I handle it myself.

- I wont buy any Ubisoft games ever, unless they are DRM-free and directly from GOG.com. No exceptions.
- I wont ever pay money for any kind of in-game or out-game microtransactions.
- I wont spend money on games under a subscription model like WoW uses.
- I wont buy individual mini-DLC packs like flood the market these days.

If there's a game that looks interesting to me and passes all of my other checks and balances, and the game has DLC available - if none of the DLC interests me I will probably just pretend the DLC doesn't exist and not consider it in my decision to purchase or not purchase the game. If the DLC contains content that I would actually like or think should have come with the game, I wont buy the base game and run around chasing all sorts of DLC packs. I will generally wait until an all-inclusive GOTY or special edition comes out that includes all DLC or some variant of that, or at least one that includes any DLC I actually care about. Usually that doesn't happen until the games are under $10 or so also, so I probably will not buy those games at all until they hit $3-5 *with* DLC.

An example of a game I was going to buy when it came out is Omerta. The combination of horrid reviews/ratings for the game across the Internet coupled with the DLC made me opt to wait until the price came down first, then for them to make a Super Holy Shit edition that includes (almost) all of the DLC. I ended up deciding I'd wait for it to hit $4 or less with all the DLC and I'd buy it on promo sale. Then GOG offered it as a freebie promo. Woohoo, $50 or so worth of game+DLC down to $0 in about a year or so. Now there's just that Japanese Incident DLC or whatever it's called. I'm sure that'll go on sale for $kleenex sometime or show up in a giveaway contest or similar. The funny thing though, for a game like that to come out without the stigma of DLC and with better ratings, I would have paid the $40 asking price it originally had.

So I dunno how accurate Ubi is across all of PC gamerspace, but I am personally a corner case at a bare minimum which lay far outside their average demographics I'm sure. :) No DLC nickel and diming or microtransactions, subscriptions or other similar for me thanks!

Are you arguing video games should be optimized for everything that can read a disc and is available out there? Because if you are, you don't understand how technology works. How about you take a PC game in physical form and try to play it on a DVD? Let me know what results you get from this experiment.
I argue he just ran a bit in circles by making the explanation too long and with too many words most GOG users don't even understand. Yes, everything he said is right, but I doubt he made himself understood to the public. xD
As for you, I don't think you understood everything I've been trying to point out so far, but at least you have the right idea.

Halo's map packs are only on a physical disc because they didn't have XBLA fully ready or avaliable for the original Xbox (and half the internet connections were via dialup, not ethernet). They would be a total of, what, 30 Megs? That's not nearly enough content to put on a disc for the price, so they added a bunch of extra stuff laying around, like the video audio test for surround sound.

It's directly based on size. Earlier internet wasn't quite as avaliable or fast as it is now. Ever use the 14.4k baud modems? took 10 minutes to download a megabyte. Downloading the Diablo 1 demo at 50 megs took (50/6) 8 hours to get on dialup. Most DLC I've seen is only a couple megs. Even with 56kbaud modems giving you 5k a second, that wouldn't have been nearly good enough for console games.

Not to mention disk space at the time. 4Gigs of hard drive space back in 2000 or so put you back a hundred dollars if I remember right.
No, I'm saying DVD's are considered DRM'd as well, and if we refuse to accept anything with DRM on it, the world would change. DVD players are usually very limited and very dumb and can't do much at all.

And YES DVD's have DRM. See Wiki

How exactly is it 50$ worth if it has been so long since it was released? You may not realize, but games go down in value with time. And unless they are in physical form and in a very limited number, you won't see that value grow with time. And value will never grow for games that are downloadable, maybe just for their physical forms and if they are very limited, though there are exceptions like Earthbound. As for the rest of what you said, this is basically the same type of mentality that makes publishers milk the industry on DLC and lowers production value of a game is the game does not receive enough attention from the public.
What you're doing is up to you though. I'm not criticizing, I'm just explaining the effects that actions of thousands of gamers have.

I simply tried to preempt any moot discussion by providing a brief overview of the issues on a more general level.
Your reluctant respect has been noted.

See... You have the luxury of making such a statement without proof. On an intuitive level you may feel that this is "true", and you may even at times be right... Now is not one of those times.
You can be (trivially) right when everyone agrees with the definitions you are using. When there is disagreement, you lose your footing. Do you think words mean anything other than what people understand them to mean? If not, and people disagree on how to understand terms, you can't just arbitrarily decide "THIS is the truth, I am right, everyone who understands the word differently is simply wrong".

Was that a declaration of faith, or were you trying to make a point? Soaking words in emotional rather than intellectual content is an absolutely natural, common thing, but come on...

While this does make sense, you can't really tell people how they should understand words ;P. A guinea pig isn't really a pig, GOG isn't JUST G.O.G. anymore, etc...

The less they are bought and wanted, the less they usually are worth. however I'm sure the publishers can say 'This game is $20 and never goes on sale and will never get a price cut'. In that case the price of the game doesn't depreciate over time. Plants vs Zombies I can still find at GameStop and Walmart for $20 even like 5 years after it came out.

There's also games that might be made by an Indie and they say 'It's $5, if we sell 10,000 or more copies, add $5 to the price' at which point it may take months or longer to hit their goal, then the game doubles in price. That is the opposite case as presented as it gets more views and becomes more popular the price goes up because they can set those prices.

Or am I wrong?

With today's high saturation of games and publishers and quite a few shovel-ware items, not being willing to lower the price in order to entice more sales is probably stupid, but there are some companies that do it. I think Operation Inner Space is one example, it's still like $15 or $20 for a foppy disk game for windows 3.1.

Screw the DVD thing, that just proves my point about how DRM exists for every game available out there, at least in physical form.

As for the map packs. Are you actually saying the distribution method has anything to do with size? You might as well argue that there are no expansion packs available for download because it doesn't fit your criteria. And please, that argument with internet speed, or XBL being ready is BS. Fable had the expansion pack The Lost Chapters available on XBL and we're talking about an expansion of a few gigs that also added a ton of content, in contrast to what you call DLC and validate as "downloadable", implying that expansion packs do not fit this criteria.
And you also seem to forget how small add-ons like the ones Borderlands has are also available in physical form as packs of 2. We're talking about a Blu-rey Disc which can hold up to 40 gigs of data only containing a few gigs of content. Do you still argue that the internet speed is not suited for these?
That still doesn't prove games don't go down in value with time. As far as PvsZ goes, it still makes a lot of money. But that is irrelevant. The game will go down in price at one point, whether the dev likes it or not. Even Blizzard games go down in price. That means the price goes down with time, literally. And publishers who want to make a profit as fast as possible see when their game doesn't sell as much and start lowering the price they are asking for. Hence why Omerta values so little now. Saying you got 50$ worth of content when the game decreased so much in value it was given as a freebie is ludicrous.

I know Morrowind never had DRM/copy protection on it, I've copied it multiple times in the past with no problems...

I never had stable internet until recently... 2008 I think? At which point dialup isn't an option and console games you HAVE to have a digitally signed physical copy of something to use it.

As for size, it's still important. Without stable internet, guess how I got online? The library. And if the size was over 30Megs it was unlikely I could get it, at which point physical copies were more important than digital forms.

And I've never used XBL for the original Xbox, and I've barely touched it for the 360.

Sure today's internet is considerably better, but you can't look at the current, you have to look at the past to see how we got here.

Oh and borderlands, can't say much as it has like 200 DLC's and they keep shoveling out more because they can get away with it. Is it any good? No clue, too much DLC, DRM, and BS overall.

As for Bluerays, did you know they are a sheet of plastic with indentations that hold the binary data? Means prices to make a Blueray disc and DVD and CD are probably all the same... As long as they are making a profit they don't care what form of storage they do as long as their customers can access it. Course XB360 requires all games to use Dual Layer DVD's for all games even if they don't take up any space at all.... I personally hate wasted space...
If some companies get what they want for DRM on games (like Playstation Now) you won't own the game, you'll just get leased it. The value would never drop, it's just a waiting game of how long you want to play and how much you're willing to pay for the privilege.

Blizzard are full of themselves, the only reason they would lower prices on any of their games is because they are beginning to see a decline on their cash cow WoW, and in order to get new players involved they have to get the base prices lower so they can get the expansions... As a whole package, WoW has only gotten more expensive. A monthly fee to play, I've heard some people with 10,000 hours and played for 5 years. If you assume $15 a month and $50 for the game, that would be (50+ 15*60) $950+ for a $50 game.... not sure about you, but that sounds like it goes up in value rather than lower...

First off, go and try that backed up Morrowind copy on a PS2, or even Xbox since the game was there too. Actually, screw it, play the game on Mac. Let's see how successful you are with this supposedly "non-DRM" copy.

As for the second post, you haven't proved me anything wrong. The fact that expansion packs have been available through a digital distribution service since the early 2000s still stands, as well as the fact the way a game is distributed has nothing to do with its size. Smaller add-ons that are available on discs also proe this point. Expansion packs are available both though DD services and on discs. Smaller add-ons are available both through DD services and disc. What is downloadable and is extra content is considered DLC. The long version of the name stands for Downloadable Content. See that downloadable? Well, I don't see anything indicating size around it.
What comes on a disc and is extra content is not DLC. Would you still call the Horse Armor that came on the Shivering Isles expansion pack DLC in spite of you not downloading it? Or the Golems of Amgarrak that came on the Ultimate Edition of Dragon Age: Origins?
Look, I'm not trying to tell people that blue is blue. That should be obvious. But interpreting a word the way you want is exactly like a muslim interpreting the Bible in an offensive way. In the end you get a retarded religious BS.
First off, I clearly explained the value of something downloadable does not go down as it does for physical games, and your example is bad. If people are not interested, and you literally making no profit, as a publisher you WILL lower your asking price, unless you have some bankruptcy wish.

Secondly, I can only facepalm to what your example. You're talking about a subscription based model game that constantly adds new content. If it still sells, and I'm not sure if you checked, but that game still has a whooping 7 million subscribers, the value won't go down. As I said before, it sells like hot cakes, no need for the publisher to lower the price for the subscription fee. As for the expansions, they DO go down in price. Have you checked the asking price for Cataclysm? It's around 5 dollars. The game does not require any expansion pack to run, so no, you do not have to pay anything more than the subscription fee that still sells like hot cakes. Not to even mention the first 3 expansions of WoW went so down in price they are given for free now in digital form. You get Cataclysm and you literally have all 4 expansion packs. Your example is wrong on so many levels I'm getting bored to count the errors.

All console discs are DRMed due to proprietary hardware and software. But last I checked Morrowind came out on PC first, which is the version I played. Also Morrowind was never on the PS2 See Wikipedia

I don't feel like arguing with you on what is/should be DLC or expansions; Size and/or system or whatever. Safe to say DLC (Downloadable or Disc Locked Content) is a cancer.

This too shall pass.

Hmmm something important I think I should follow at this point. Here if you care; And that's all she wrote...

I'm sorry, what? Do you even know what you're talking about? If you really believed that I didn't know Morrowind wasn't available on PS2, then you might want to retake some English classes about sarcasm. As far as the rest of my post goes, you clearly said console games are DRMed because you can't play them on anything but the consoles are designed for, but PC games are not because you can play them on both Windows and Linux. And I'm here to tell you that your definition of DRM is wrong. First off, PC games can be played on any PC, given the OS is right. And console games can be played on any of the console they were designed for. So what's the difference? You think the difference of OS is truly what DRM means? You're very mistaken. Take this mere example, though I'm not expecting you to comprehend anything. A guy made GTA IV to run on a PSP. A system for which the game was not designed for. Does that make the game any less DRM? No. The game was not innately designed for that system, and the guy most likely went through a lot of effort to get that game running, just like Wine devs went through a lot of hassle to make Windows games run on Linux.

As for the second part of your post. Bitch please! Just because you have no valid points or arguments, that doesn't give you the right to use a lame excuse like that. As far as I'm concerned, you're the troll for even posting something like that and quitting a conversation. And in all honesty, I'm done with your BS and trolling. This conversation is over, unless you have constructive arguments toward thee thread.

DLC is just like F2P model, either the company handles it well or they don't. It's not inherently bad.

Right now it isn't. I was speaking of the original price of the game at the time it came out plus the price of the various DLC when it came out being valued in that ballpark at that time.


Oh I fully realize that, and that is one of the main points I was making in my message however I'm not sure how you interpreted what I said to be the reverse to be honest. Read it too quickly perhaps? :)

I see games come out at $30/40/50/60 or more on release day, and then depending on the game the regular price drops down $5-10 after so many months, then another $5-10 months later, etc. to the point where the majority of games are less than $10 within 12 months of their initial release. Take Tomb Raider (2013) or Bioshock Infinite for example. $50-60 games on release day. One year later $10 on seasonal promos or cheaper if bought in a bundle with part or all of their prior game series.

The market is so flooded with games nowadays that it's hard to believe any PC gamer doesn't have 100-1000 games stockpiled to keep them busy for 10 lifetimes, with little incentive generally speaking to fork out $60 for every cool game that comes out on release day which they'd like to play. Everyone's gaming habits vary of course, but there aren't going to be very many games that get $30+ out of me on release day or at any point after that. Most games I buy will be $3 or less simply because as interesting as they may be, I generally have ample to keep me busy and can wait 4/8/12/16/20/24 months or whatever until the game is $2/3/5 etc. Very very few games can sustain a high price over the long haul. Even if someone points out a title that is $50+ 2/3/4/5 years after it first came out, for every one game like that there are 2000 that are 10% of their initial retail price in under a year or less.

It's free market capitalism and freedom of choice. Supply and demand, economics 101, etc. None of us including myself are under any obligation to buy any video games or play them ever, and no company is under any obligation to make them. They make what they want to make how they want to make it, and if we like what we see and want to have it and we can agree on a price point then we might buy it.

If a game publisher can't survive in the marketplace under the free market driven by consumer demand regardless of what consumers choose or how much a individual consumer or the entire cross section of consumers is willing to pay (for whatever their own individual reasons might be) then they will either adapt to the changing demands of the consumer and/or alter their busines model or they will eventually go out of business while someone else takes their place.

I wonder how much money the game industry made off me between 2006 and 2012 when I completely stopped buying video games entirely and just played the 2006 and older games I already owned. I was not under any obligation to buy their games, and if the industry suffered, it is because they didn't offer me what I wanted at that time and I have a completely clear conscience about whatever may or may not have happened in that time. Now I am buying games again because there is something out there that I perceive of value to me at a price that sinks the deal for me.

Publishers/developers can design whatever game however they like, and can use whatever monetization model they like with it and I'm perfectly fine with that. If they want to put out a 10 minute game with 500 DLC each of another 10 minutes long and that sells and makes billions, I'll probably buy some of their publicly traded stock and come along for the ride. But I'm not interested in that type of game and would never buy it.

Wherever the market goes no matter where that might be, I am completely ok with that even if no company makes any games I'm interested in. They shouldn't make games for me or price them the way I want. They should design games they think are a good business investment and price them how they think the current market at a given time is willing to pay for them.

Free market capitalism when it is working correctly separates the good ideas from the bad ideas and I support that whether what is on the market is something I wish to own and part with my money for it or not.

What I decide to do with my money doesn't drive the market. But if there are enough like minded people voting with their wallet and a company can't make profit from what they're doing - then they're doing it wrong and either someone else will come along and do it right, or they'll figure it out themselves.

Ubisoft should go nuts and make games however they want. They wont see any of my money unless they make a game I find interesting though and it shows up on GOG.com DRM-free for $3 or less, or $5 or less if it is particularly appealing to me. If they put up a big kick ass AAA title on day-1 DRM-free here, hell I'll spring full price for it much like I plan on doing for The Witcher 3. If not, they wont see my money though and if they go out of business entirely tomorrow I'll sleep like a baby, guilt free as it isn't my responsibility to keep them alive, it's their own bean counter's job.

One should think about how much money a game company makes selling their games digital download at $3 per game versus not selling any of them at all. If they put a price on a game of $3 and it is still around in stores tomorrow, a week later, a month later, then it's making them money.

If they want the big money from me for one of their games (any company) though, then they'll need to take some lessons from CD Projekt RED. I've got $50ish sitting aside here smiling at me waiting for me to hand it to them as The WItcher 3 release date nears. Cyberpunk 2077 is next on deck for me after that. The rest of the game industry won't get a dime more from me than I feel like parting with though, and if that displeases them in any way, I'll keep my money and they can keep their games.

I'll sleep like a baby. Like a baby.