Paid DLC: Myth or Reality?

[Mycroft]

So I've not had the chance to be on the forums all that much, with this new game called real life being quite demanding , but there is one rumor I have consistently been hearing that deeply concerns me. Paid DLC. This is never a good move by any game developer, I don't care who you are. I have recently been hearing that KSP will now have paid DLC. Are these rumors true? See if you talk to the average guy on the street who hasn't played KSP, they usually are of the opinion that the game is overpriced. Now you and I know that the 40 bucks you pay will give you thousands of hours of enjoyment, but they dont, so they see it as overpriced. Many people I convinced to play KSP balked when they heard the price. And its not like 40 bucks is all that much, but they still balked, even though I mentioned the thousands of hours most get out of it. Why. Just why. Now if I was a potential customer under the misguided impression KSP was slightly over-priced, and then I heard that paid DLC was a thing, that would be an instant turn off for me, because every single game with piad DLC added went down the same road: The devs had a good game maybe with some free DLC from the community, that did well, then it got sold to another company. They wanted to make more money, so they added some paid DLC, originally as just plain add ons, but nobody really bought them because the free DLC plus the stock game worked just fine. Or even just plain stock. Then the devs realized that to get people to buy this, they had to put something in that made the paid DLC better than the free stuff. There are two ways to do this. One more drastic way is to take from stock and put in paid DLC, and the other was to put some new element or bug fix in paid DLC that players simply could not do without. So in essence, they had to force the players to buy paid DLC because the community free stuff was better. Paid DLC does not have its own market, so it must take from somewhere to make one. There must be demand for something to sell. Basic economics. Paid DLC isn't something that is naturally desirable, so they must make players want or need it. Both roads are a very bad turn, and it always marks the beginning of the end for the game. There's a good reason for this too. If you start doing that, entirely aside from whether it is a money grab move or not (even though I cant see how it wouldn't be, but I'm giving KSP a lot of slack) the community sees it that way and resists. Once your devs are fighting the community, that is death to the game. And eventually it ends up where stock is basically so awful that the game is unplayable without paid DLC. If it's worth paying for, it's worth adding to the stock game. There can be official DLC, and I see that is the case, but it must be free of charge. If not, you are falling down a very slippery slope that will be the end of the game. So I suppose I'm looking for reassurance that my favorite game is not going down the drain by putting out paid DLC. If it is, I will be forced to grab the versions I can, and hunker down and stop getting new updates. The DLC may have great content. I'm not arguing that. What I am saying is it cannot cost a single penny because then we risk falling off this edge. That is not a risk we can take. This community is amazing but every time the dev team changes or a major change is made, then there's always the people who cry: "This is the death of KSP!" Take the devs leaving. Hooooooo boy that caused a ruckus. And that wasnt the worst one. Just a recent one. But if we go down the road of paid DLC, that will really be the beginning of the end for KSP. We may be a while in dying cause KSP has a fiercely loyal community which is amazing, but the end is inevitable if you go down that road. Because for a game to make a steady profit, new people must buy it. Paid DLC is a fast way (one of the fastest ways) to turn off any potential customers, no matter how awesome the game. And the community already there doesnt exactly want to pay for the new DLC either. So as well as asking for reassurance, I am also pleading with our devs to either never go down that road or if they have already started, then to pull out while they still can. Because once you commit to that road, it is very hard to go back, because then your reputation is ruined. Then paid DLC becomes just about the only way you can make a profit any more. Then that stops. KSP has a lot of life in it. Please please do not ruin it by putting paid DLC in the works. That is death. Game devs in general shouldn't make DLC really, they are kinda supposed to, you know, develop the game. But we can make slack for it like if some stuff wasnt quite polished enough to make the actual game then having it as DLC is cool. But paid DLC is just a bad idea all around.

 

Please tell me my favorite game isn't going down this route.

 

Sincerely,

Mycroft, CEO of CMAU Incorporated

[Gaarst]

If by rumours you mean that Squad made an official announcement about it, then yes.

In case you didn't know there are also "rumours" that the KSP IP was bought by Take-Two.

[klesh]

For reference:

 

 

 

[nascarlaser1]

Its not all that bad. Squad needs money sooner or later, and since the rest of the updates are free, I'd gladly buy it.

also, I don't know if this is the right spot for asking, but why do most people think that paid DLC is bad for games? lots of games have them and they don't force you to buy them.

[Frybert]

As linked above, yes. Squad has announced a paid expansion. You can discuss in one of the threads linked above.