Capcom Rethinking On-Disc DLC

Chris Svensson, of “feed us your hackers” fame, has returned to do a bit more community management – in regards to DLC this time. After the recent negative response to Dragon’s Dogma DLC being on the disc, along with the whole Street Fighter x Tekken disaster, Svensson has said that Capcom is now re-evaluating their DLC distribution methodology but not before revealing that we should be expecting the same from upcoming Capcom games.

We would like to assure you that we have been listening to your comments and as such have begun the process of re-evaluating how such additional game content is delivered in the future. As this process has only just commenced in the past month or so, there will be some titles, where development began some time ago and that are scheduled for release in the coming months, for which we are unable to make changes to the way some of their post release content is delivered.

Some of Capcom’s thinking in regards to on-disc DLC was revealed when Svensson said “the decision to include some additional (but not all planned additional) game content for the game on disc was made at the beginning of the game’s development cycle as at the time.” He goes on to justify the DLC by saying that it will add to the overall playtime and lifespan of the game. 

Unfortunately, this all just makes it seem that Capcom will just keep the DLC behind and off the discs and ship it out digitally after release, perhaps waiting a bit longer between release and the launch of the first package. Svensson’s statements show a distinct lack of understand what the main criticism of Capcom’s on-disc DLC is: it’s content made and budgeted for the game but specifically distributed in a way that earns extra profit for no extra cost. Content that would do what Svensson is claiming the DLC would do as part of the main game itself, only adding to the value of the base game so they don’t have to lower their expectations from 10 million to 1 million next time.

It’s irrelevant what the costs or profit margins of DLC is anymore. With consumer reaction this negative, DLC this quickly after a game is released devalues your product.