If an Offer in a Forest is for a Limited Time and Nobody Knows, is it Still Stupid?

Last week, people were left scratching their heads over Marvel: Ultimate Alliance’s DLC pulling a Shadowcat from the PSN store and disappearing through a wall. The incrimental expansion that included Psylocke, Cable, and Carnage simply vanished into an alternate Earth without any warning. Finally the explanation has come down to us, and like I said all along, I’m sure it makes perfect sens-… Wait? It was a limited time offer? Since when?

Oh great, time limited downloadable content. This model just keeps getting more and more awesome doesn’t it. I bet everyone is super happy we bought that Horse Armor now since the slippery slope seems to be nice and greased up for our decent into the pits of user-unfriendly microtransaction hell.

I don’t even try to hide the fact I despise the DLC model in 90% of the companies that do it, but Activision doesn’t and here is their statement:

“The Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Downloadable Content was a limited time offer, expiring on December 31, 2009.”

Ok… I guess in some bizarro world creating content, that people pay for, and eliminating it without any warning makes sense. Especially when at no point was it ever mentioned that the DLC was a limited time offer. But DLC is such a joke now that doing something this nonsensical is just par the course. I used to not be against it, I’ve always been a PC gamer and we’ve always had the luxury of expansion packs, so DLC just seemed like what it was touted to be- incremental increases in a game to extend its shelf life. But now, it isn’t that anymore, it is called “premium content” which means “we are holding a gun to the heads of stuff we could have put in the game, and if you don’t pay us ransom you will never see it.” It used to be DLC would come out after a game was already released, generally a good time after, in order to give more play and, therefor, more value to a title. Now companies like EA and Capcom have DLC ready to go THE DAY OF the games release, which is pretty much the largest pile of horseshit this side of Kentucky.

So no, it isn’t surprising that Activision screwed over their fans by letting DLC expire forever without letting anybody know that it was a limited time offer. As long as EA can sell individual pieces of hair to you after you already dropped 50 bucks on a game that, surprise, has limited hair options, or Capcom can sell you the multiplayer of a game after you already bought the rest of it as full price, it isn’t like the model is going to become more user friendly.

Hey, you guys know what isn’t a limited time offer? Physical media you actually own. Go figure.

[Source: Joystiq]