14 DAY TRIAL // With the release of Gears of War 2, a lot of people began asking about what Epic intends to do in relation to the downloadable content for their Xbox 360 shooter. Cliff Bleszinski recently talked about what might be coming for the fans of the game, while Michael Capps, the president of Epic Games, revealed in an interview the fact that, in an effort to combat piracy, DLC might be used to offer vital components of a game.
Capps first attacked the secondary market, saying that second hand game sales hinder the industry, just as game rentals because no money from renting and second hand sales goes down to game developers. DLC is one of the best ways to make players care about their games. Putting a code for additional content in the game box or creating another way of getting exclusive content to buyers helps them hang on to their original purchases.
Capps added that “I've talked to some developers who are saying 'If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free'. We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used - way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it”. It would be one ugly future if a publisher or developer decided that some portion of a videogame could only be accessed online, after having paid a fee, even if someone had bought another potion of the game.
After all, Spore's restrictive DRM, which basically punished the buyer for wanting to play the game on his own terms, did not manage to reduce piracy significantly and even generated a backslash against Electronic Arts for failing to deliver on the promise to implement a system fair to customers.