Games

Another excellent example of this working is Factorio.

The original game doesn't cost a fortune, it's made by a small extremely dedicated team. They polished it so hard the shine made everything else look like vanta black. Playing Factorio ruins other games because the depth and quality of everything else is so poor in comparison.

The game came out in like 2013 early access. Full release completed in 2020. A decade after initial launch, they are going to offer a DLC, that will cost money.

Absolutely happy to pay for a DLC for that perfection.

Agreed. If CA charged a few bucks for the 1.6 update, I'd have bought it without hesitation. Same with 1.5.

The best example right now is Factorio. There's a new expansion coming out in October. It isn't free, but it adds basically an entire new game on top of an already excellent and fully fleshed out game. I'm gonna buy it the day it goes on sale without question and without waiting for reviews.

Then there's crap like Starfield where they added 1 mission for $7.

Slay the Spire is current $8.50. Starbound is $4.50 (both are on sale rn for future readers) if you're looking for a space game.

the idea behind DLCs

Back when they were called "Expansion Packs" and came on a disc for players who didn't have a good internet connection. You can trace the death of the expac and the rise of MTX in the postlaunch monetization of Bethesda's biggest games - Morrowind through Skyrim all have entire extra games that you can graft onto them for a premium price, but then during Skyrim's release and re-release era they dip their toes into MTX via the Creation Club, to their total embrace of the concept in FO76.

But actually I think that blaming Bethesda is a bit of a red herring. The real dawn of DLC as we know it today wasn't horse armor, it was Halo 2's additional multiplayer maps. Microsoft went from releasing maps for free to charging for early access to maps that became free eventually to making everyone buy the maps. At around the same time they forced Valve to charge for Left for Dead 2 maps that were released for free on PC. MS really took point on conditioning gamers to lower their expectations for post launch content.

I have bought it twice, possibly on sale both times but still. I’d never heard of it, and I’d never played any style of game like that, but Nintendo advertised it to me when it launched on the Switch and I eventually bought it. Later my family started taking the Switch more and I eventually bought it again in Steam. No regrets! Happy to support good games from small developers that don’t break the bank!

But I have absolutely no problem with that whatsoever. Dude wrote a good, solid, complete game, sold it for a fair price, and made bank. That is the business model I want software to be sold under, and I'm thrilled to see it working for him.

The Apes always pay their debts.

What about the Bored Ape?

Yeah but concerned ape added about half a game's content with that new island. Nobody would've blinked if they charged for it.

This. It all boils down to value for money. 5 dollars for a skin cosmetic is bullshit. 5 dollars or more for DLC with meaningful content is okay.

Yeah easy for him to say, he’s a one-man operation, so he gets ALL the profit to himself. Probably millions of dollars at this point… he’s set for life. He doesn’t really need DLC money. But other devs probably do.

The cross-platform saves probably wouldn't be that hard from a technical perspective. The game is written using MonoGame and likely doesn't have that many changes to the core of the game for ports. From what I know about MonoGame (which is admittedly only a little, so I may be wrong!!) the engine abstracts pretty much everything.

I think the stumbling blocks are outside factors. Games often don't update on different platforms at the very same time because console vendors take longer to vet updates. A game save from an updated PC version synced to a console version without the update could break it. Also setting up and maintaining the server infrastructure for syncing is its own can of worms. Certainly doable but it would pretty much require him to outsource that and he may simply not want that.

Exactly. A good content DLC should be similar to buying a new game, but cheaper for both the devs and players.

Sure. He made many millions of dollars within the first couple years of releasing it. That's why he can pretty much do whatever he wants, including continuing to work on the game without charging additional money for it. And of course, it keeps selling more copies, and will for many years to come, so he has tons of money continuing to flood in.

He certainly seems like a pretty grounded guy, and it's nice that he tries to be cool about stuff, including not gouging the player base for more money. Being an individual has huge advantages compared to being a corporation, in some ways. A corporation would pretty much be obligated to maximize profit. He can just be pleased that he brings joy to millions of players, and has already made a fortune.

Yeah. He deserves his success, and I'm happy to hear he's doing good things for his customers... But this kind of reads like a slight on all the developers who release DLC for profit. The vast majority of companies don't succeed this well on any game.

So I'm glad he's said this, but I also don't think poorly of devs who release for-profit DLC, either.

I agree. Good expansions are usually worth the money.

Meh. They charge for DLC, the DLC is optional and adds a lot of depth to the game, it’s a small studio…

I’ll take it