First Modern Warfare 2 DLC Pack Sales Are Stimulating

by Jeff Mattas, Apr 07, 2010 4:20pm PDT








26 Threads | 83 Comments


    Or, from another viewpoint, "The prevalence of de facto mandatory DLC in multiplayer first person shooters may result in the end of free expansion content in the subgenre."

    There are always going to be the apologists saying, "You don't HAVE to buy it if you don't want to," but to that, I say "Try starting Modern Warfare 2 on a console without the DLC in August 2010".

    Mods, sort of, were traditionally seen in PC multiplayer as a way to extend the life of a product, but... if you can SELL them that content, and it's first-party developed instead... and that's sort of the tinfoil-hatty version, but it's probably kind of true. -- Jake Rodkin, Idle Thumbs 48, 5 minutes, 53 seconds

    And again, IW has not announced the price of the PC DLC (Robert Bowling's Twitter feed, the official community management source for Modern Warfare 2, specifically says "I don't know; announcement coming soon" on an April 6th tweet), but I don't think it's going to be free.

  • It's called "vendor lock-in". The best part of MW2 is the multiplayer, and since it's matchmaking-driven, those players who don't buy the DLC run the risk of getting kicked out of a match on a map rotation if it goes to one of the DLC maps. It's similar to the Halo 2 and Halo 3 DLC map packs.

    And since MW2 is authenticated via Steamworks, that locks in MW2 PC players into an infrastructure where they may be forced to pay for the PC version of the DLC pack. The "free multiplayer trial" this weekend may be an attempt to placate pending outrage at the announcement that the DLC will not be free (if it isn't free; there's been no announcement from IW yet).