A Fool and His Money

To a degree this belongs over at my Gaming Corner but I'll write a post over there that's more related to gaming later. In this case my rant is more about people so I'll Ramble here on the Path. Recently I picked up Total War: Warhammer on Steam (I'll leave the game details and such to the Game Corner Post later) and having been a fan of the Total War series for a while and a long time fan of the Games Workshop tabletop games I had been looking forward to this incarnation of the series. I was happy with the game play but I noticed a concerted effort on the part of players to stack the ratings for the game negative.

The complaint by the people throwing negative reviews up like they were candy, however, wasn't because the game was buggy, or that it was a bad game in any real fashion. Rather the complaint was about the DLC. Now, I've been gaming a long time and I've seen this change over the years. In general it's a good thing, yes I think there are some companies that take the DLC stuff too far, and I often think stuff is over priced for what it is, but I understand a fundamental aspect of the seller/buyer relationship. If I don't like the price, I don't buy.

One of the DLC for the game is a blood and gore pack, to add ... you guessed it ... blood and gore to the battles of the game. It is priced at $2.99. Now it's more than I'm going to pay for it, but then again I don't have a burning desire to see blood and gore in the game. It's a strategy game, not an action game, most of the time I'm zoomed out at a level to give me a birds eye view of the battle field paying attention to multiple enemy units and managing my own. I don't care about the fine details of the fight, that's largely irrelevant. I can see if the unit is doing well, or dying pathetically with the information already given from the game.

In reading over the reviews (on the main game) a person was giving a negative review to the over all game because of the greed of the developers in charging for this option that should have been included free in the base game. In his complaint he said that he had already bought the Blood and Gore DLC but wanted to express his displeasure that they were so greedy and didn't include it.

Here is where the title of the post comes from. Businesses price their products at a point that they believe people will pay the price. In this case this reviewer has proven them right, he bought the DLC (as did a lot of other players) showing the company that people are willing to pay extra for that content. As a developer if you are shown that people are willing to pay extra for something, why on earth would you not charge for it.

He can get on forums, post reviews, and tell the company as many ways as he likes that 'charging for this is unacceptable' but if he backs that up by buying the product they are not going to change what they are doing, there is no reason to.

Now if he had said everything that he said but had not bought the product, and refused to pay extra for the content that he claims should be part of the base game, and enough other people did the same, then the developers would have learned that the market is not willing to pay extra for that extra content and either they include it in the next game (and likely make it a free DLC) or they don't offer it at all on the next game if it increases development costs significantly.

The lesson is 'Don't piss and moan about the price of something but then pay the price anyway.' Either a product or service is worth the price to you and you pay it and obtain the product or service offered, or it isn't and you shouldn't pay the price. The seller can not FORCE you to buy it, yes they can not lower their price, but you still have the option to not pay it. In most cases they will eventually lower the price or offer the item at a discount for a limited time (aka put it on sale) and you can decide if you want it at that reduced price or not.

Like voting (see the previous ramble) buying an item tells the seller that your are willing to pay THAT amount for THAT product (or service) ... because that is what you just did. You can grumble and complain all you want, but at the end of the day YOU were willing to pay that price.

I know that when I buy games when they release that I'm going to pay more for that game than I would if I waited to buy the game later. The games that I choose to do that on are the games that I am willing to pay that premium to have the game sooner rather than wait to get it later. If I buy DLC for a game it is because the DLC adds something that I want in the game, if I don't feel that it is something that the game needs, or if I think the price for what the DLC adds is too high ... I don't buy it. It really is that simple.