Genuine Imitation Downloads

Call them microtransactions, call them pay-per-downloads, call them whatever moniker you like, but apparently feelings of Christmas spirit never extend to Microsoft, which expects you to essentially pay for content you already own.

According to a forum member at neoGAF, a segment of these digital downloadable extras are oddly alike, coming in at an identical size of 108 kb. Teeny tiny, but adding oh-so-much to your gaming experience. How is that possible? Well the theory is that what you download is not actually content, but an encryption key that unlocks content already existing on that $60 game you bought. With all the add-ons from the disc, it was calculated that the actual price for all of the content was over $100 per game. I find it curious that such things are legal. Downloads I can understand, its additional content that wasn’t previous in my possession, but these sorts of embedded bits strike me as dangerous. Not only do you have to fork over the purchase price, but the disc that you just bought, now physically in your possession and legally yours, has things on it that you can’t access without paying more. In my little world that’s called fleecing. Fleecing like a herd of rabid Scottish sheep.

The poster, ‘a Master Ninja’, provides a list of games that seem to practice this soul-sucking behaviour, and discussion seems to indicated that folks are a titch disgruntled. I can’t say that I blame them, but seeing that I’ve never microtransacted a single thing, I’m just going to sit here smiling.

Via| Game|Life