Do you avoid buying games with lots of DLC available?

Every once in a while something will catch my eye on Steam but once I see the massive list of DLC for it, I pretty much blow it off. Latest example? Total War-Warhammer. on sale for 20 bucks but 70+ dollars worth of DLC available. I know if i wait 6 months or a year I'll get the "gold" version with all of the DLC on sale for 15 dollars... it's not like there's a shortage of entertainment software out there.

Even a game that I absolutely love like Galactic Civilizations 3 has a bunch of DLC for it- haven't bought any of it - just playing the base game

Anyone else of the same mindset?

I'm pretty sure the last DLC I paid any money for was Arma3 something or other...maybe Apex?

I tend to avoid games with massive amounts of DLC, which these days is everything EA. I want my DLC to be something that is clearly optional, and fits the mold of the old-style 'expansion pack'.
Alternatively, I'll wait until some sort of 'game of the year' edition comes out with the DLC.

DLCs are less of an issue to me than loot boxes or pay to win schemes as observable in World of Tanks these days. Of course, it always pays off to study carefully what you'll get for your money, so an inflationary number of DLCs is more likely to make me give up analyzing the title, and therefore to not buy it in the first place. And yes, I tend to wait for "gold" versions, although these are becoming less prominent with Steam. From a publisher's point of view, retail sales are a (potentially big) flash in the pan, Steam offers a fat tail (extended sales periods with slower price decay, a trend with which I'm absolutely okay). Well, Steam also largely eliminated the second hand market for PC games, something that I see more critical. But apparently not enough people seem to care about that.

Being a fan of paradox games i can't escape dlc. But i always buy them during sales, at least 50% off.

I avoid any of those like the plague.
The only exception I can think of was Rise of Flight, i happily purchased most of the DLCs, even the useless ones .

Cheers,
Slug

Best answer I can give you is, it depends. I have a few that I own all the DLC for (AC and Fallout 4) and a few that I own a little or none. If it's "mandatory" DLC, then I avoid it like the plague.

I'm the same as Dave. It depends.


If it's a game that I absolutely love then I will usually buy all the DLC when available or I'll just buy the "season pass" from the beginning. If it's a game that I played once and thought it was just "ok" then I won't bother with the DLC.

To me it comes down value added.
For example, I have bought all 3 of the Rainbow Six Seige Season Passes. I think they add a lot to the game, although this last one may be questionable.
Now for Ghost Recon Wildlands, I didn't give it a second thought as that DLC looked like a turd and went 180* away from what the original game was.

My preference is not to have the Microtransactions or crap like that, but that is the new model.

Yup. The game development/publishing business has changed in that it's no longer enough to just release a game and then rely on the one-time revenue they get from the purchase price of each copy. Games now have to generate a constant revenue stream.

I agree with PM..Games with numjerous DLC's are just cash cows ..Although I did go that route for Matrix games Panzer Corps and order Of battle Pacific and Civ VI

Most dlc these days is related to MP so it doesn't apply to me. Season passes, loot boxes etc are annoyances but usually don't matter.
If it's SP dlc I pick it up when on sale to breathe new life into the game.

Depends on the game, when I am buying, and type of DLC.

For a game like Dark Souls 3, I wanted to play it when it came out, was a fan of the series, and so I bought the season pass and wasn't disappointed. The DLC were great expansions to the base game.

For games like Rise of Flight or Hearts of Iron, I would never normally buy a lot of their DLC if it is cosmetic or "plaything" in nature, but I bought all regardless during massive Steam sales. I think I got just about everything both had to offer for an extremely low price. I don't remember what I paid but recall it being extremely low for the amount of content.

Under normal circumstances (i.e. not part of discounted bundle offer) I would never buy cosmetic DLC and definitely never anything loot box related. But most of those games with the latter are ones I don't play anyways.

I would argue that Panzer Corps and OOB were DLC done right. Particularly OOB were the base game is now free. In both cases, if you enjoyed the base, the DLC were practically whole games in themselves--especially PC's DLC. Plus they were all gameplay related--no giving unfair advantages to multiplayer, no silly reskins.

In my opinion DLC isn't an issue. If a game costs more than $60 or so dollars, the developer should get more than that for selling the game. Creating more content for the game is absolutely fine. The problem that I have is when you don't actually get anything for your money, or when features are ruined in order to make you pay more. Random prizes, taking what could have a been a pack of items that would make sense as a $5 add on and selling them individually for $2-3, etc.

I absolutely refuse to spend money on terrible low value pricing schemes. Sadly I seem to be in the minority and I doubt my refusal to spend does much. But I won't stop.

I am so happy I don't have a clue what a loot box is.

Put me into the "I don't mind paying more as long as its fair value" camp.

Games cost the same to buy as they did decades ago and yet most of them are vastly more expensive to develop, something has to give.

I refuse to spend money on loot boxes and pretty much haven't played a game with a loot box other than a few f2p games that I play whenever I'm standing around after "hurry up and wait".

Yes but they also sell vastly more copies and since a lot of it is digital there isnt any overhead so overall game companies make more money today than they did years ago.

Not sure if that's enough to offset the huge amount of resources now required to develop and market a major title.

According to my video game developer relative, who's worked with nearly all the major gaming companies, today's big games require huge teams and a lot more time to produce than they once did, to the point where the pool of talent becomes a limiting factor.

There's only so many people with a really effective skillset and hiring and retaining them long enough to complete a title is a big issue.

Normally it would be a turn off for me, however, I mainly just play Rocksmith2014 with my Fender Stratocaster HSS now and look forward to DLC every Tuesday. New songs!

I have over 400 songs to play and have been buying DLC for a few years for it.

+1

All you have to do is watch the ending credits sequence after you finish playing a major title game and you'll discover that the number of people involved is almost as much as the cast and crew for a major film production.

That's because you are not in the target demographic for those games Nixer.

I did that, for the first time I can recall, after completing "Wolfenstein The New Order". It is AMAZING how many people were involved.

But again, wasn't "Strike Fighter" and "X-Plane" the work of one person, for a long time at least?

Yes but I wouldn't call those "major title" releases.

Not in the overall gaming market, but within their genre they are. X-Plane has a legitimate claim to being the best civilian flight sim available.

I dont normally do DLC stuff with a few exceptions. Normally I buy whichever version is cheapest or on sale then play the game and by the time I would get to the DLC im done with the game anyways. Some games it'd different. For AC I bought most of the DLC and still use it weekly. I guess iRacing has DLC which I have a lot of... I've got several of the DLC planes in Rise of Flight and BoS and DCS