I may be slipping into a mode of senile cynicism at my ripe old age of 27. More and more I feel like I get pissed off at the way big money pushes certain products onto us. If these companies just spoke honestly and said what they meant we’d hear things like this: “Of course you don’t have to buy a New 3DS, but certain games will run like crap if you don’t. Please buy all of your 30+ gigabyte video games digitally; we’ll give you 500 GB of storage. Thanks for buying 40 million PlayStation 4s, now buy another, better one this Christmas. We at Xbox make the finest controllers in the world – for $150.” I hate all of it.
It’s not just hardware, either. Now it’s quite common for any game that’s generated much buzz to have associated with it a collection of expansions, DLC, NFC figurines, season passes, and special editions. Gone, forever gone, are the days when you paid $60 for a long, full. complete, bug-free, and network-tested video game. EA has proven that you can tack on an extra billion dollars to your yearly earnings if you focus hard enough on DLC and microtransactions, and we’re starting to see developers and publishers become more audacious with their offerings for those willing to pay – and withholding from those who aren’t.
I’m talking about this today because of the newly announced Gears of War 4 Ultimate Edition . For the most part this is pretty typical stuff: it’s a fancy way of bundling together the game with its respective season pass. When you look into the season pass, though, it doesn’t sound like you’re getting very much for your money. All 24 additional maps being introduced to the game’s multiplayer will be available to everybody through matchmaking, but if you have the season pass you can access them permanently and load them up on dedicated servers for you and your friends. That sounds okay, I guess, but I doubt that many of you will actually be doing that. Other than that it’s a bunch of fluff; items, skins, and characters that only the most hardcore fans will look forward to using.
Gears of War 4 will cost $60, and the price of the average season pass is $30-40. If you’re Microsoft, how are you going to convince everyone to dish out that extra $40 for some skins and the ability to load up new maps for private matches? By screwing them over if they refuse to pay, of course. Here’s a new honest quote to add to that first paragraph: “Prove you’re a true fan by spending $100 on our game and we’ll let you play it four days before the official release date.” That’s exactly what they’re doing.
This feels really sleazy to me. GoW 4 isn’t the first game to be made available days before the official release date – off the top of my head I know that NBA 2K16 had an early access period that wasn’t a beta – but typically that’s a reward for people who pre-order the game. That feels very different to me. With a pre-order bonus, a publisher is saying “Thanks for being a fan and having faith in our product. Because you know you’ll enjoy the game, we’ll let you boot it up a few days early.” But with Gears Microsoft is effectively saying, “Thanks so much for being a fan of the game. We weren’t entirely sure that the season pass would be worth it, so we’re putting early access behind a significant paywall. We know you’ll understand and buy it anyway.”
Those of you who are planning to buy the Ultimate Edition anyway probably don’t see the big deal, but for those who simply can’t afford to spend $100 on a video game, this is a slap in the face. If Gears of War is your favorite franchise and you’ve been there since day one, you’re still cast aside as a second-rate fan for not paying that extra money. It’s not the end of the world, but you will have to sit there for days while the press and all of your wealthier friends play the game and upload videos to YouTube ceaselessly. It sucks to know that you’re missing out on a game that you care deeply about, and Microsoft knows that; it’s counting on it.
I know pre-order bonuses, DLC, and season passes aren’t going away. I’ve come to grips with that. You have to pick your battles, and I have no rebuttal when faced with the amount of money these companies are making from all of these extra charges. But dividing your fanbase according to wealth seems cruel. Microsoft would say that the official release date is October 11, but it’s not anymore. The release date has now been moved to October 7, but you have to pay for it. Everyone else has to wait, and that’s not cool.