10 Recent Games With Terrible DLC Strategies

Downloadable content or “DLC” has become a problematic reality of playing modern video games that can vary wildly from title-to-title. For every game like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which has not only given away numerous bits of free content to players but promises to only charge money for substantial expansions, there are titles like Batman: Arkham Knight that want you to spend almost the price of the game itself on future content sight unseen. The digital games marketplace has begun to resemble the Wild West, where publishers try and see how badly they can swindle their customer base before the bubble bursts. These 10 games represent some of the shoddiest DLC practices of the last few years. Unfortunately, they sure won’t be the last.

10. Dead Rising 3

At first glance, Dead Rising 3‘s DLC strategy seems pretty average, offering a modestly-priced season pass of $30 for four separate add-ons. But when the game received a massive title update in January 2014, it was apparent that Capcom, the game’s publisher, was effectively punishing those who chose not to purchase the game’s DLC. The massive 13 gigabyte patch, in addition to containing general bug and glitch fixes, also contained the add-ons, which meant that everyone would technically have the content on their hard drives, even if they couldn’t access it. Many players were rightfully indignant that they were being forced to sacrifice valuable bandwidth and hard drive space for content they might not want, as the patch was mandatory. Considering that hard drive space and bandwidth caps are increasingly at a premium thanks to the high file sizes of next gen games, Capcom’s DLC strategy feels inconsiderate at best.