My favorite topic has come up again, unlockable content that is on the disc you paid for. This time, it’s in a whole new form with Xbox Live Arcade’s Castle Crashers “King Pack.” For a mere 160 points ($2), you too, can pay extra for what they included when they sold you the game.
Now here I would normally go on rant about the evil that is developers The Behemoth. As a consumer I cannot agree to the practice of selling a game with content I am paying for, but not allowed to play until I give up more money.
When is the last time you bought a burger and were told that you have to get it with cheese, but you are not allowed to eat the cheese until you give another buck? Ever bought shoes that you see laces inside the shoebox but are not allowed to use them without swiping the credit card again? Sure, you can wear your shoes without laces, but it sucks knowing they are right there IN THE FUCKING BOX YOU JUST BOUGHT!
There is nothing illegal with the practice, it is just the developers, publishers, Microsoft, Sony, etc, who do not seem to think we, the consumers buying their products, are smart enough to figure such things out. Or maybe they are aware we know about it and assume we don’t have the will power to keep our dollars in our wallets.
In this case in particular though, I have quite the quandary. It seems Castle Crashers developers The Behemoth have already made a statement attempting to clear their name of this whole ordeal:
This pack should go live sometime on the 14th of January for 160
Space BucksMicrosoft Points ($2.00). All pricing for this and future downloadable content is entirely decided on by Microsoft. All we can do is throw in our input (free!!!!!) but at the end of the day it’s their decision.
So they are pulling a Valve in a way, trying to put this one on Microsoft. Which I can completely see, even recently Jonathan Blow (creator of Braid) has come out about Microsoft charging for the Braid premium theme which he also wanted to be free.
To stay on the topic though, it does still irk me that The Behemoth could in fact just made these characters available from the beginning, or possibly when they recently updated the game with a patch. Already I have read of people complaining that instead of working on downloadable content they would only sell much later on, they could have worked out many of the glitches the game shipped with.
Make up your own mind on how you spend your cash, just remember, when you see a download that is only 108kb in size, you already are in possession of the content you are about to purchase.
See also: a Master Ninja’s compiled list of games that contain 108kb unlock keys.
This trend is quite annoying.
I really dug Castle Crasher though. It is only two bucks..but lame nonetheless.
I hope Left 4 Dead doesn’t do something like this.