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Valve adopt DLC – monetising vs. progress?

FC2 Fortune Pack - now chargable on Steam!

The PC has been largely free of the blight of the monetised morsels of gameplay that is Downloadable Content.  Largely down to the lack of a standardised platform with which to distribute (and collect payment), ala. the current games consoles, nobody has really managed to get a firm grip on the masses who prefer to do their gaming on their desktops rather than in their lounges.

Now, Valve, purveyors of Steam, have finally revealed a modification for Steam that allows additional content to be plugged into games offered on the service on a case-by-case basis.

Unsurprisingly, the second the ability to make money presented itself, the vultures quickly swooped in – Swiftly following the 2 add-on maps for indie-release The Maw (maps that were supossedly cut from the Xbox release for time, making their absence from the PC strange and/or sinister in its capitalism) which premiered the service, Ubisoft have already released the ubiqutous (and, previously, console only) Far Cry 2 Fortunes Pack for a nominal sum.

Like the ‘not-quite-DLC-but-DLC none-the-less’ Soviet Assault expansion for WiC, this DLC is only compatible with Steam releases of their parent games, which makes sense, but is quite annoying when you consider:

  1. the majority of owners of both WiC & Far Cry 2 have non-Steam versions of the games, for whatever reason (choice, cost, etc.)
  2. this DLC likely won’t ever appear outside of Steam.

Progress?  Hardly, but if it means the publishers have to take measures like this before they start trusting the PC crowd again, could this be the only way forward?

By Andrew Bryant

The resident PC elitist fanatic enthusiast, Andrew’s grim outlook on the industry provides CNS with a hefty dollop of its news content. Oh, and he has managed to convince Barry to let him review stuff too!

Hilarity ensues!

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