Why pirates should have access to DLC

A little while ago, Crysis 2 was leaked in its entirety onto the internet a while in advance of its release. Then Killzone 3 was leaked - a PS3 game. Not that PS3 games haven’t been on the internet for years, but now that people can (theoretically) actually PLAY them, it’s serious business.

        So all kinds of noise and hoopla was made over piracy and arguments were had. You know the drill. Over on Destructoid, Jim Sterling made the point that game developers only have one source of revenue - retail sales of their games. Other industries, like movies and music, can make money through multiple avenues - theaters and DVD for movies, live shows and merchandise for bands, etc. But that’s not really true, now that we have easy ways to sell additional content to players. I forget whether Jim actually mentioned that, though he probably did, but I’m in “work mode” at the moment so I’m not going to risk getting distracted while I look it up.

        Everyone feels kind of cheated when “downloadable content” comes out for a new game that’s really just a code to unlock content that’s already on the disc. Generally that just happens with console games, since PC gamers would probably just dig the content up on their own, but anyway. Fact is that DLC for an existing game is incredibly cheap to make and market, compared to making a brand new game, and it has way higher profit margins. Even if you only sell $5 map packs to 1% of your player base, it takes a fraction of the time to create those maps. As long as it’s actually adding content to the game, DLC is great for giving players more of what they want, assuming they like the game enough to spend more money on it. DLC can also be sold to people who bought used.

        No matter how you look at it, DLC is really, really profitable. Most studios need to turn a profit in order to keep making games. Conclusion: Most studios now churn out DLC for their games.

        The PC game market is different in a number of ways from console games - there’s no retail used game market, but by contrast, they have piracy to deal with. Usually pirates will get their hands on DLC and make patched versions of games that can play the DLC, but if you pirated the game and want to buy DLC, you can’t. Why not? Yes, they don’t “own” the game as far as Steam and whatever other online authentication system is concerned, but getting $5 from a customer is better than getting no dollars.

        Somehow I don’t think this is going to fly with anyone staunchly against piracy, because they want you to buy the game in the first place. It really depends on the distribution and authentication systems, though, because clearly you can’t register DLC with your Steam account without having the game registered.

        Alternatively, game developers should have tip boxes (like developers on Kongregate have) so people can send them five bucks any time they steal DLC. That works too.