DRM News

The Sinclair Solutions Tester Pack DLC released today for BioShock 2. Nothing new there. It was really just unlocking content already on the disc. Really, nothing new there, either…a lot of games are heading down that road to encourage purchases of new copies of the game.

It costs $4.99. Okay, THAT is delving in to new territory.

Yes indeed, you are being charged to ‘buy’ content that your game came with. Let’s give that a moment to sink in, and put in a quote from 2K Community Manager 2K Elizabeth.

Hey guys,
I noticed there was a bit of confusion about our Sinclair Solutions Tester Pack file size, and I wanted to clear things up for you. The way our engine and game structure works is that people need to have the exact same content for people to play together. One of the challenges with post launch content for MP is that it can split the player base, and we want to avoid that whenever possible. For this content, creating the DLC package the way we did allowed for us to not split the player base – so whether you purchase the new content or not, you can still play with your friends.

She’s referring to the DLC file being a whopping 24k or 108k in size when talking about the file size. So, yeah, THAT’S small enough to arouse a little question and suspicion.

Now, the point of this site is information…but I’m going to go a little off the reservation and in to the realm of ‘opinion’ here. I don’t have a problem with optional DLC content. I don’t even have a huge problem with already ‘on-disc’ material being unlocked in this fashion when you enter a key. Some of you may disagree, and that’s cool.

I have a HUGE problem with a person BEING CHARGED TWICE for content on a brand new game, and that is EXACTLY what is happening here. If I buy a used copy and you want to charge me a few bucks to get a new license key to unlock some content, that’s one thing…this is charging someone $5 to play levels that came in the game they just dropped $50 to buy brand new.

And the major labels wonder why they’re losing money.