In a move to combat piracy and used games sales, EA and BioWare will be packing in some bonus goodies into all new copies of Dragon Age: $15 worth of free DLC and some cool in-game items.
EA and BioWare are providing some incentive to purchase copies of Dragon Age: Origins legally and un-used by packaging in some additional content into all new copies of the game. This counts not just for the Collector’s Edition, but the regular as well.
Priced at $15, the “Stone Prisoner” add-on for Dragon Age can be bought as separate DLC, but comes free if you buy the game the “legit” way. The add-on lets you add a golem named Shale to your party and supposedly adds a decent number of hours to the already extensive Dragon Age playtime.
The other bonus content is the Blood Dragon Armor, a special piece of equipment that you can use in Dragon Age as well as, somehow, Mass Effect 2. I’m guessing the gear will look different in either game. Both pieces of content – the add-on and the armor – will come in the form of redeemable codes.
Dragon Age is no stranger to bonus content already, what with its pre-order rewards being XP-boosting items for use in game. The purpose of this content, however, isn’t so much to get people to pre-order the game but to combat piracy and lost revenue from used games sales by giving gamers a reason to buy their games new and legally. A free $15 DLC pack isn’t a bad deal, but is it enough to overcome the allure of getting a game for cheap secondhand, or, if you’re an evil pirate, for free altogether? I’m not entirely sure.
Our very own Susan Arendt is in Edmonton right now checking out Dragon Age, so look for more coverage on BioWare’s sadly delayed RPG epic in the near future.
