Capcom is Here to Take Your Monies with RE5 DLC

Oh, Capcom. You give us great franchises like Street Fighter, Devil May Cry, Dead Rising, and yes, even Resident Evil; yet you must pull stupid, stupid practices like this. If you’re not aware of the recent controversy with the newly-announced Resident Evil 5 downloadable content (DLC), where the game itself just released a mere 2 days ago, then let me catch you up: Capcom is readying some “new” content for RE fans in the form of the franchise’s first ever online multiplayer modes, Versus, Survivor’s Rule and Slayer’s Rule. 

From Kotaku: 

“Versus allows up to four players to match wits in online battles across two very different game types. Slayer’s Rule is a point-based game that challenges players to kill Majinis. In Survivor’s Rule, players hunt the most dangerous game, each other! Players can begin the hunt as Chris, Sheva or other secret characters, and choose from either one-on-one or two-versus-two team matches for either of the two gameplay styles.”

For a game that already emphasizes co-op game play, this would seem like a nifty extra right? Wrong. Why? Because Capcom execs have seen the need to actually charge, for essentially, a new online multiplayer mode – you know, something which is practically standard in the industry these days. Not saying that all games would do well to fit the multiplayer option – RPG’s for instance, are single player only affairs – and RE does seem a peculiar pick given its stop-and-shoot controls, but when DLC is only a few weeks off of the game’s original release, one has to wonder why this couldn’t be a part of the on-disc content. 

To justify the $5 (or 400 MS points) cost on the 360 and PS3, Capcom has attempted to explain the reasons behind it at CVG:

“Although Versus mode makes use of the assets that exist in the game, the functionality is not currently in the game and is above and beyond the initial scope of Resident Evil 5,” Capcom told us.

“We have never included a Versus mode in Resident Evil before, and as well as the costs of development of the feature, there’s also additional bandwidth costs associated with it,” it added.

For content that already utilizes all of its art/character/graphic/environment assets on the disc, is it really necessary to charge for what amounts to the new modes and net code? Now I’m not going to pretend to know the ins and outs of video game development, but for a game and franchise that is practically guaranteed to be a certified blockbuster in sales due to its rabid fanbase, can’t that profit cover those “functionality” costs?

And if the Versus modes are described as being “above and beyond the initial scope” of RE5, then why were there already Achievement/Trophy listings dedicated entirely to the paid content? That’s because that the modes were already pre-planned, already a part of Capcom’s business decision making, probably knowing full well it was going to be charged ahead of time. Coupled with the fact that this DLC is set to arrive in a few week’s time, one can even venture to speculate that the DLC was being developed alongside the original game in the first place – which in itself seems to be common practice for developers these days and only supports the negative stigma associated with DLC.

Remember, it’s not the cost of DLC that has generated backlash over Capcom and other similar situations, but rather the principle of it: if people keep on blindly buying supposed “add-ons” assuming that that’s just the way the industry works, then more companies could continue down this path of utter ridiculousness and greed. While the paid-for DLC market is still in its infancy stages (only being introduced in this current generation of consoles), we have quickly seen that there have been right ways and wrong ways to do this. Capcom have unfortunately, fallen in temptation for the latter.