Help us fight spam!

Arc System Works Turns To DLC-Heavy Model in Upcoming Fighting Games
By ImJustThatKinky • 6 years ago

Last year was a bit of a mess, but looking back I realize that the entire Internet came together to establish clarity in one, single aspect: DLC and loot boxes are shitty. In case you may of missed it, the bestest company in the world, EA, attempted to convince everyone that gambling away your money in hopes of unlocking new content was actually the optimal way of playing video games. Obviously this got them into a lot of trouble with consumers which cost ~3 billion in stock value. Not to mention their overlord Disney and lawmakers around the world were phoning in. After that horrific failure, you’d think companies would get the idea that people are tired of DLC and half-complete projects.



Well fuck you consumer man, because they didn’t. Arc System Works, the company currently developing Dragon Ball Fighterz and Blazblue Crosstag, announced a few days ago that out of a planned 40 character roster for the crossover game, half of it is going to be offered as DLC. Now hearing that sounds god awful, but it gets worse when you figure out how they split it. In the base game, it will be 10 Blazblue characters, 4 Under-night characters, 4 Persona characters, and 2 RWBY characters. Since RWBY will be the only franchise to be getting actual characters for the first time, you can imagine this killed the hype a bit. I mean, how are you gonna put two out of four main characters in a base game? That’s like a Naruto game where you can play as Naruto and Sakura, but not Sasuke or Kakashi. Why the fuck am I playing it then?


Will this affect Dragon Ball Fighterz?

Thankfully for DBZ fans, it’s unlikely. The game is already set to be released on January 26, so it’s a little too late to modify the game’s business model now. Cross that with the fact that it’s being developed by a different division within Arc System Works, and I don’t see any immediate threat to DBZ. The problem lies in that if this BlazBlue test works well for the company, they may start to regularly employ the method for future games (DBZ Fighterz 2 perhaps). However, they have dipped into the DLC cancer in a smaller sense.  If you want 8 more characters to complete your Dragon Ball FighterZ experience, you're going to need to pay a good $35 dollars worth for the season pass. They also come with stickers and lobby avatars for their respective characters.

 

Yall's division better not try any shit. Update: They tried shit.

Wait a minute, how much exactly will the DLC cost?

While the thought of buying a half-finished roster shrinks one’s dick two-fold, you can figure that it doesn’t really matter if the cost of the DLC evens out. Luckily, the latest news indicates that Arc System Works will be listing the price at around $40 for us in America. This would mean that a $20 dollar DLC pack for the other 20 characters would still only make it a full-price game.


What’s the big deal if it is a fair price, just as DLC?

Well, there isn’t one in that case. At least as far as the business model end goes. The problem is that the company has already lost a substantial amount of reputation in marketing. Assuming they do only want to end up charging people a fair $60, they should of made that excessively clear from the start. Developers these days should know that a huge negative stigma surronds the term “DLC”, especially in the fighting game community after Street Fighter V’s colossal mess of a launch. Instead they have not been distinctively clear and about every social media page they own is filled with backlash from fans of all four franchises in the game, as well as a few DBZ fans worried about future updates/installments.



In a nutshell kids, be upfront with your business model. Don’t bring up half of your game being DLC without thoroughly explaining yourself and how you’re NOT trying to rob your entire consumer base. Because if Arc Systems IS trying to do this, I can’t imagine them getting away with it since they depend on a small, loyal group of customers.

What’s the last game that you’ve had ruined for you by DLC? Let us know below so we can be angry together.