You want my "facts"? You want to know why this is bad? Here you go.
1. The content is either fully or 99% of it on the game disc.
- Game journalists sites IGN, G4TV, Kotaku, Joystiq, The Consumerist, and others have investigated this, many of whom have contacted Capcom directly. Capcom has not officially denied this, has not countered their arguments, and has avoided the issue with other big websites.
- The file size is extremely small. People argue that 100kb is the "magic" unlock number, yet Darth Vader for the Soul Calibur IV was a simple unlock who exists on the game disc and his unlock key was 7 MB. I did my own research, and one single high-resolution screenshot from my computer clocked in at over 2 MB, and that does not take into account additional lines of code, new music, and whatever else they "added."
- Capcom has a history of withholding and locking out content from their games. They did it with Mega Man 9 and Street Fighter IV. It's only common sense that they continue a pattern of DLC distribution that they've done in the past, regardless of whether or not people like it. Only just now are people vocally calling for it to end, so it doesn't make sense that they would stop their business practice before this.
2. The content is not worth $5.
- Capcom Japan charges $3 less than other countries.
- The mode as many point out does not fundamentally change anything other than turning on friendly fire and allowing two additional people to join Mercenaries mode, something that would not necessitate the price for something so menial and easy to program into the game. There is no true extra effort put into the mode, nor any semblance of balance.
- A competative versus mode is routinely included free of charge in other games where versus is "beyond the initial scope" of the game, such as Grand Theft Auto IV and even Chronicles of Riddick.
- The quality of the mode is heavily open to debate and customers are not allowed to try it out before committing to a purchase, resulting in a money gamble that wouldn't exist if the mode was included with the retail.
- By charging for competative versus, the mode is automatically limited in the number of players that will play the mode and the community that might spring up around it. Competative versus is a mode that needs and thrives on a large and growing community, but the hurdles involved in playing the mode are just too high for that to happen.
3. The content was excluded because it was on a seperate budget.
- But there remains ONE overall arching budget for the game.
- Even if that were the case, that reason exists because the mode was intentionally placed on a seperate budget, not because it had to be. If they had included it with Mercenaries mode, it wouldn't be an issue.
- Even if it is on a different budget, why should the development cost be excluded from the $60 (in some cases $90) retail cost customers pay to begin with? I find it difficult to believe that including it under the profits from the retail game alone would have hurt sales.
- The game has already made over $240 million dollars, easily making it one of the best selling games in recent memory and more than covering the cost of development. With all that profit, I find charging extra for a 2 MB line of code that could've easily fit in with the rest of the game to be in rather poor taste.
4. Charging for modes of gameplay sets a precedent.
- Capcom is a leader in the industry, one of the lucky companies that is making a LOT of money, while smaller companies are drying up or shutting down. If Capcom gets away with it, other companies will see how much money they make shortchanging customers and do the same, releasing incomplete games and requesting customers pay extra for the full experience.
- Capcom has done this before in Mega Man 9 and Street Fighter IV. If they do it this time and get away with it, they'll just keep doing it again and again and it will inevitably get worse.
- Content such as this has often been included free. Many companies go the extra mile to include worthwhile new content or patches, such as free co-op in Fable 2, free maps and modes in Valve games, and free or inevitably free maps and modes in Gears of War, Unreal Tournament, and Halo. Never before has an online competative mode been charged for seperately from the game it shipped with... until now. It discourages other companies from doing extra work and instead rewards laziness by charging for content that's complete, finished, old, and often included in the game disc itself.
5. It's to cover bandwith costs.
- Perhaps that were the case for the PS3 version, to pay for the local servers, but that's a complete non-issue for 360 users, and yet both customers are required to pay the full amount, which is both double unfair for Xbox users because they've already paid for the bandwith costs AND their purchase is used to cover the bandwith issues of their PS3 competitors.
6. The PR responses have been unprofessional and insulting.
- Many gamers are upset about this. Capcom only aggrevated the issue by unprofessionally calling their legitimate complaints "BS". Can you imagine going to another company, say Wal-mart, with a customer complaint. "Hey, this lamp I bought seems defective." "Sorry, but that's BS. It works just fine." "No, it's not BS. It has a feature on it that doesn't work." "Sorry. BS. Next!"
- When fans have questioned the legitimacy of Capcom's responses, they are simply told "this question has been answered" and their question discarded, even if customers are entirely unsatisfied with the answer they received and ask for better clarification, more information, or proper and direct answers.
7. The DLC goes against the very principles of good game development.
- DLC is a good thing when done right. It enriches a game and its community and should make fans eagerly anticipate its release. Few people were complaining about GTAIV's DLC or Halo's new Mythic Map packs, because that is DLC done correctly. However, instead of enriching the game and its community, it has divided the fan base, embittered a large portion of them, turned fans against Capcom and each other, and done far more damage than it ever did good. Not even Horse Armor did that with Oblivion.
- DLC is also, and should be, additional content created and released after the game that hopefully fleshes out the game's experience and improves upon issues taken with the initial game. Instead, this is content that was completed before the game shipped and withheld, does nothing to improve the many issues fans have with the game, and instead introduces a whole new number of problems to work around since the controls of RE were not tailored to that of a competative versus mode. It's apparent little time went into improving the experience and instead it was tacked on, giving fans nothing truly new or worthwhile for their $5.
- DLC is something that should be created for the fans with the fans input and suggestions being the highest priority, with the time devoted to fixing problems the core game experience had in the inevitable DLC. Instead, the fans requests, both for more worthwhile content and for the Versus mode to be free of charge, were promptly ignored and dismissed. This is less DLC created to expand the game and draw in new fans and more a quick money grab that failed to take in any sort of customer response or criticism into their business decision.
8. Other fans don't like it either.
- Chiefly related to the manner the DLC was distributed, to clarify. Whether Capcom has the right to do so or not should not be an issue. Just because they can does not mean they should, and a very high percentage of us think it is unfair. Whether Capcom is in the right, a large portion of fans are dissatisfied by their decision, and Capcom, as a company that makes games FOR fans, should pay attention to each and every vocal, upset customer who feels they acted inappropriately. Capcom should be making every effort to satisfy these upset customers, but instead put profit margins before people and demonstrated a complete disregard towards the satisfaction of the people who buy their product. Even if the fans are mistaken about every single issue regarding the DLC, it would be to THEIR best interest, and the interest of Capcom and its reputation, to cater to their demands instead of arrogantly telling them "if you don't like it, you don't have to buy it."
So, yeah, I think many of us have a very good argument and many of us are unsatisfied for many, many reasons, not just "it's on the disc" and "it's $5". It goes quite a bit beyond that.
