When did “extra content” turn into “stuff we held back until you paid again”?
Downloadable content used to be something worth getting. It wasn’t constant. It wasn’t planned months in advance. It showed up later, after you’d finished the main game and wanted more. It added something. A new faction. A proper expansion. A few hours of actual gameplay. It wasn’t day-one content chopped off and sold separately.
Now, DLC just feels like another product tier. Base game, deluxe, ultimate, season pass. And the content? A few skins, a mission that could’ve been in the base game, maybe a weapon or two. Occasionally you get something decent, but most of the time you’re paying for filler, cut content, or some marketing fluff wrapped in lore.
DLC used to feel like a reward. Something a dev team worked on after the fact because the game had done well and they had more they wanted to say. It came out six months later. You paid for it because you wanted more of the thing you already liked. Now you buy it because you’re worried the main game won’t make sense without it.
Plenty of games now announce DLC before they release the game. That’s the giveaway. You haven’t even played it yet, and they’re already selling you more of it. That’s not expansion. That’s planning content distribution like a subscription service.
Even worse, a lot of DLC is locked into pre-order editions or exclusive bundles. You don’t just buy the game. You buy the promise of more game, gated behind whatever tier they’re pushing that week. And if you wait? That content eventually shows up in a “complete edition” for half the price you paid at launch.
It kills the magic. Instead of getting surprised with something new, you’re just ticking off what you already paid for months ago. “DLC drop” used to mean new levels, new enemies, new ideas. Now it means a reminder that the base game was never finished.
Not all DLC is bad. Some developers still treat it like it matters. The Witcher 3 gave us real expansions. XCOM 2: War of the Chosen was almost a new game. Blood and Wine wasn’t cheap, but it was worth it. That’s the model. That’s what it could be. But that’s not what it usually is.
What we get now is fragmented content disguised as value. Pre-planned pipelines. Content calendars. Marketing slides that break the game down into chunks before it even launches. It’s not downloadable content. It’s scheduled monetisation.
So yeah. I remember when DLC was exciting. When it felt like a bonus instead of a bill.
What’s the last piece of DLC you played that didn’t feel like a scam?
