I recently became suspicious when I bought three extra characters and an additional course for the new Everybody's Golf (Hot Shots Golf). Each download came in at exactly 100 Kb, several hundred megabytes below what I was expecting. Being the intrepid investigator that I am, I ran a Google search for "downloadable content already on disc" and it came up with a whole hosts of results: Rock Band, Beautiful Katamari, Unreal Tournament 3...

Now I consider myself a fairly active and knowledgeable gamer, and I have a subscription to (what is supposed to be) a leading magazine. Yet I've never seen or heard of this issue being discussed in any detail. It's scandalous. I remember the huge uproar over the downloadable horse armour for Oblivion; surely this is far more outrageous.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? Or is most DLC like this? If so, is it something we should have to get used to?

Well I own Beautiful Katamari and Rock Band. So let me share what I know.

Beautiful Katamari's downloadable content is largely made up of things that are already in game, such as accessories and items that you can acquire legitimately or via the marketplace. There are also levels in which the game requires you to buy in order to unlock achievements.

Rock Band epitomizes the utilization of downloadable content having over 230 songs available for download. Rock Band 2 also has 20 additional songs that couldn't fit on the disc. But since they're making us wait for them, I think they just want to market it for Christmas instead.

I've since played Tales of Vesperia, which allows you to buy enhancements on the XBLM, such as skills, potions, level ups and gold (so you dont need to grind i guess). Too Human will eventually jump that bandwagon as you can buy items from an ingame attachment to the XBLM.

I wasn't there for the Oblivion uproar, but I just finished that game and it was BORING. The first 2 hours of Shivering Isles was better enjoyed than anything else i could remember about Oblivion.

Hmmmmm? You bought a golf game and you didn't expect evil? You
purchased extra characters... You purchased extra ????@%^#&$*#((()!!!!

I can't go on, my soul has turned black and I must find a baby
hippo to eat. Damn the Scottish, it's all human sacrifice and
bloodletting for twenty thousand years, the English smoke their
wives like hash, and the Scotts can only invent Golf and Peter
Pan. Oh wait, I guess that did work after all. satan is lord,
all hail satan.

Uhh... yeah...

So anyway, from the sounds of thing you just downloaded a "legal" game crack. Game Dev's are getting fairly savvy really- people have coded and cheated for years to swap palletes and characters in games, now they sell it. I don't think you really got cheated- I mean, you got what you wanted, right?

kind of defies the point of being DLC if its already on the disc though doesn't it?

surely it should be 'called already downloaded content' as the download aspect is pretty much gone.

Also I lol at you buying a golf game, no offense ment.

Destromas:
There are also levels in which the game requires you to buy in order to unlock achievements.

I thought that was against Microsoft's rules about DLC and achievements.
I thought every game had to have the full 1000 points available from the start and anything extra could only be another 250 points and it's up to the developer if they want to charge for those.

Exit was released with only half the levels and you needed the other half to unlock all the achievements. Those map packs came later, but they were free.

LainiWolf:

Destromas:
There are also levels in which the game requires you to buy in order to unlock achievements.

I thought that was against Microsoft's rules about DLC and achievements.
I thought every game had to have the full 1000 points available from the start and anything extra could only be another 250 points and it's up to the developer if they want to charge for those.

Astronomic Katamari - 90G
Download stages and make a katamari over 1,500,000km.

The game standalone has 1250 gamerscore, before you buy the additional levels.

Oh and to go back to harhol's original point.
I think it's a bit unfair to include something on the disc and make people pay to unlock it but ultimately it's up to the player to decide if they think it's worth buying or not.

LainiWolf:
Oh and to go back to harhol's original point.
I think it's a bit unfair to include something on the disc and make people pay to unlock it but ultimately it's up to the player to decide if they think it's worth buying or not.

They're not MAKING anyone pay to unlock something that you can play through and unlock with effort. I think it's a casual vs hardcore system to be honest. I can't think of any other way to describe it.

Downside:
Also I lol at you buying a golf game, no offense ment.

Not one golf game my friend - every game in whole damn series! I still look for the Coca-Cola edition of the PSP game on eBay...

Destromas: in the case of Everybody's Golf World Tour, there was no way to play for the additional content. You had no choice but to "download" it.

Before Kratos was available to buy, this was the first game in the series to not have a PS mascot available to play. Hmmmm. My feeling is that Kratos was supposed to be in the original game but was removed so there was an equal number of novice, intermediate and expert characters.

Destromas:

They're not MAKING anyone pay to unlock something that you can play through and unlock with effort. I think it's a casual vs hardcore system to be honest. I can't think of any other way to describe it.

Well yeah, that's what I said. The player decides if they think it's worth buying or not.
But what about stuff like the costume sets for SCIV? You can't unlock those through game play but they are on the disc already.

Madness? THIS! IS! SPARTA!

On a serious note, a lot of the stuff can either be unlocked in-game, downloaded for free, or both, if it's on disc. I don't get the fuss.

Just sounds like they're asking for someone to crack it for free if you ask me.

Don't really get the point of it... You have to be online to "buy" it, why not download it anyways? Why include it in the game, if you gotta go online to unlock it?

Logic: 404, Not found.

Its more of paying to just unlock things. I see where you're coming from since this is essentially defeating the purpose of DLC its just a scam to make more money, thats all. Now if it was on the computer...nothing is hidden from us computer geeks! bwahaha

Funny, PAIN seems to do the same, instead of buying I'm unlocking.

Usually I'd go "OMGWTF"...but...the game was free, so maybe actually giving these devs. some money this time would be a good move. Though, one dollar characters just screams "Nickel and Diming" - the Abusement Park add-on seems to be the only substantial thing added to PAIN, and that also came with an update. I'm just paying to unlock.

Why do you assume the courses were on the disc simply because the files were small? You're making a huge jump in your reasoning without looking at it from a logical standpoint. There's no reason for the new courses or characters to be large files, all the assets required to create them are on the disc in the form of textures, objects, etc.

What you've downloaded are akin to header files that are just telling the game how to arrange the pre-existing assets to form something new. It's not as if you're buying something that you already had since the game didn't ship with this particular course layout or character layout already on the disc, what's there are just the resources needed to make these new additions.

I can appreciate your concern, but in the case of the new course it featured entirely new textures and objects that are not featured anywhere else in the game. The course is called Oceania Resort and is themed on Australia, so you have the likes of the Sydney Opera House, kangaroos, dry & dusty terrain, a hot air balloon with the Australian flag on, etc.

If they did include these additional textures/objects on the disc, unassembled, and then released a £2.99 100 KB download to arrange them together into a course, I still find that a little sneaky. It's the principle rather than the price that annoys me. You're essentially purchasing a glorified crack.

How long until this system is used for £5 add-ons. £10? £20?

I think it sets a dangerous precedent.

See, now you're assuming that resources such as the Syndey Opera House are in the disc as one big chunk just ready to be plunked down. That's not really how it works, the opera house you see is a complex model made up of a lot of textures arranged to look like a building. Using generic textures already in place for other structures in the game you can easily create a totally new building from the resources.

While I agree with you on the principle that a lot of times micro-transactions almost seem like the developers just trying to waylay you and take some of your money, what I disagree with is your indignation and assumption that what you've bought was already there and all you did was buy a key to it.

It's something new that didn't exist in the original game, it was probably not even created until after the game's release date. So what if it uses existing resources to create new gameplay experiences? I don't see that as a slight at all, I see that as a very efficient use of the available content. If they were to create every single texture in the course new the content would take months to create, require a great deal of man-hours, require a much larger download, and ultimately have a higher price.

Instead of whining and moaning about it, just enjoy your new course. If you have fun playing on it then it's worth the 3 bucks you paid for it.

Retoru:
See, now you're assuming that resources such as the Syndey Opera House are in the disc as one big chunk just ready to be plunked down. That's not really how it works, the opera house you see is a complex model made up of a lot of textures arranged to look like a building.

Even the model would take more than 108kb, which is the size of these unlockables.

Why do you assume the courses were on the disc simply because the files were small?

Because this sort of thing has been happening for a while now. Luckily it's been crap that has nothing to do with anything, like the maid costumes and school uniforms for Soul Calibur 4 (came with the collector's edition, regular version buyers have it on their disc and have to pay to unlock it), but it's still something I don't really want to condone. If you want to nickle and dime people, make it less obvious at least.

Retoru:
It's something new that didn't exist in the original game, it was probably not even created until after the game's release date. So what if it uses existing resources to create new gameplay experiences? I don't see that as a slight at all, I see that as a very efficient use of the available content. If they were to create every single texture in the course new the content would take months to create, require a great deal of man-hours, require a much larger download, and ultimately have a higher price.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the first part I bolded. I'm no expert on texture mapping or modelling, but I don't see how it's possible to create something like a kangaroo by using existing parts of other models & textures and 100 KB of code. My point is that, in my opinion, most of the resources used on Oceania never "existed" in the game I paid £30 for, even though they were on the disc I paid £30 for. I find that unacceptable.

With regard to the price of brand new DLC: even if it took months to make and was the best golf course in history, they could never get away with charging more than a few pounds for it anyway; the retail game has seven courses and only costs £30. Therefore, there's no incentive for them to develop new content after the game has been released. Instead, they remove existing content, hide it on the disc, wait a few months and then release a "download" on the PSN.

Again, I'm not objecting to the price of this particular course or its quality. My issue is with the practice of including hidden content on game discs and then making fans pay for the privilege to access it. It's something which has the potential to get out of control and will no doubt contribute to the declining relationship between gamers and large publishing companies.