OK, I can’t believe I have to write this article but listen up.
We’ve all be there before. We are talking about, DLC or something and the latest shitty DLC pack that we absolutely HAVE to get on to of a game in order to experience it completely. Yes this is a discussion I had recently and I’m using it for the sake of this article so shut up. You are going back and forth in a healthy round of argument tennis, when somebody steps in and goes, “Well it’s their game isn’t it! They can do whatever they want with it!”
*sigh*
You do know that’s like… the WORST argument ever. You are basically saying that the only defense you have for this behavior is that it’s literally not illegal to do it. Nothing good can be said except the cops won’t literally bust down your door and put you in jail for doing it.
Yes, when something is your creation you can do whatever you want with it. That’s your right. However, we aren’t discussing what anyone can do. We are discussing what people SHOULD do.
Like, I can slap myself in the face, but I probably shouldn’t. I’m physically capable of it, but doing it does little but give me a sore face and a lot of wasted time.
There are a lot of things that all of us can do, but probably shouldn’t do. Talk on the phone during movies. Mosh pit at your 4 th graders clarinet recital. Listen to Nickelback.
So when we talk about how crappy it is that Capcom forces us to drop X-teen dollars on DLC just to see the whole story of Asura’s Wrath , or when Arc System Works releases a million copies of Blazblue with a million DLC characters that we all have to buy to stay tournament relevant, or when you can pay 40 extra bucks to immediately unlock everything in your favorite shooter of choice, we aren’t debating whether or not they CAN do these things. They already DID do these things.
What we are debating is SHOULD they do these things. Is what they are doing moral and ethical? Does it somehow harm the consumer? Is it good for the life of the company, the franchise, and the industry as a whole? All of these questions are complicated and nuanced and are worth discussing, and none of them get answer by saying, “Well it’s their game they can do what they want with it.”
Now I’m not really sure what people are trying to say when we reach this point in the argument. Maybe they think that ownership rights supercede any and all other factors when it comes to business policy. Maybe they just believe that the invisible hand of the free market will sort everything out. Maybe they are just tired of talking about it and don’t want to think about it anymore. But saying something like “it’s their game they can do what they want with it” effectively says nothing. It adds nothing to the argument. It makes no important statements or worth. The only thing it does is shut down the argument in frankly kind of a childish way.
And should we have DLC that automatically unlocks everything or hides parts of the story from players? I don’t know, like I said it’s complicated and I should probably do a whole other article about it. But what I do know is that saying “their game, they can do what they want” doesn’t get us any closer to answering that question.
So do us all a favor, don’t do that anymore. No one, I repeat, no one is debating the can. We are all debating the should.