how do you know 2k make the same amount of money when it's sold at hmv and when it's sold at game? i know if i was running a large business, and one customer could sell 10 million, the other could sell only 0.5million that the first would be getting a better wholesale price, and this is pretty much the norm with all wholesale afaik.
how do you know developers/publishers charge dlc only because they can and not because they have to to fund the development, advertising, distribution or the dlc?
to compare 2 games pricing structure is ridiculous as you don't know what has been put into it. those offering free dlc may only be putting a small amount of money into the dlc, those offering paid stuff may have a huge team working on the dlc so there has to be a sale price.
in the past dlc rarely if every existed, now developers see money in this dlc will be sold which is only good. some will be greedy and purposely restrict stuff so it can be sold as dlc, some wont. it's very hard to say who does it and who doesn't, and the ones that do do it, it's hard to say why.
the customer was never sold the content on the disc, i imagine the only reason it's there is to reduce the cost to 2k games so that they don't need the server power to needlessly send over the files. makes business sense and could even be reducing the price of the dlc. would you be more satisfied if they hadn't included the content on the disc, and then charged every extra to cover the additional server costs?
OK, true, I don't know what 2K The publisher makes. The developer who is really the important bit, makes the same, the publisher is the one that owns/contracts the manufacturing plants and distribution chains, and sells to wholesalers, true, but the developer will likely only see extra cash if they reach so many sales. Right? This we know to be true from many public backlashes from developers (IW, the Ninja Gaiden dev, a load of angry Jap devs getting crap pay etc etc). And some publishers hold back on those bonuses and dispute them, hence the aforementioned backlashes and public attention to these facts.
Yeah maybe they spent a lot of time developing the DLC, at the same time they were making the game? Dude, this DLC was announced before the game came out, and dated like 3 days ago to be available next week, a full 2weeks after Mafia 2 was released to buy. Granted, the game would have gone Gold in what? June, Maybe May? That's like 2-3 months to make an add-on that apparently lasts around 1/4th to 1/5th the size of the game it is "Expanding". I think these missions were supposed to be in the game they just made over the main character with Jimmy instead to sell it like GTAs TLAD or TBoGT, so it's like a new advaenture in the same city. Granted speculation, but releasing DLC of that apparent size after 2 weeks? Come on!
To sa DLC has not existed is a MASSIVE understatement. I mean the best and greatest examples of free DLC is the Team Fortress 2 updates and Left 4 Dead Updates. They get ridiculous amounts of free DLCs (L4D2 weekly, TF2 many times a year). Hell TF2 now dwarfs the size it once was with all the updates to it. But because they were free they fly without the DLC moniker, but that's what they are. Would you say neither team put any effort into those? Or advertising those? Or had a big team on it? They advertise the crap out of them with weird hilarious videos, and such, and demand a whole...
Zero pounds and zer-ity-zero pence!
And TBF the customer is sold the content on the disc, that's the point in the medium. I mean the Hot Coffee exploit shows this to a T. We are sold the content of the disc and it is sold and rated upon such content as is supplied, to be told we need to buy something we already technically own? That's not right. And Mafia II is a Steamworks game so 2K or whoever else don't need to host any files, it all goes to steam and they push DLC and updates through their network, so giving us DLC on a disc to reduce such need is really negligible, at least in this case. Granted they might pay steam some cash to host them, but it probably comes as part of the agreement with using the platform and its properties anyway (like an extra % on sales or so).
TBF I don't wish to argue with you, you do have a point. I am against DLC to some point, at least charging for it, it's just an extremely bitter jaggedly thorny pill when it comes so close to launch of the full game and apparently expands it by quite a bit, that SCREAMS of holding back and cashing in. If the DLC came out a few months down the line and was obviously developed well after the game was fully finished, then it's much easier to swallow, and the dev should be compensated with money if they so wish then, but to charge us for the same job twice? No!
Hope there's a solution.
how can it make sense for you to say something like this? You act like making a game costs the same amount no matter what game, so someone trying to earn money from different sources is just being greedy.