Understanding the Term "DLC" and Expanding the Game's Longetivity

This is kind of an old term but here's a refresher... or a little gaming history lesson or a useful article if you don't have any idea what DLC is.


DLC, also known as "Downloadable Content" is the new form of Expansion Pack in gaming. Back then, we purchase our expansion packs in retail, meaning we get a CD/DVD containing stuff that will expand that game's longetivity and add more features. Remember buying that Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft Battle Chests? Those we're the glory days. Now we get this additional content in digital form like Call of Duty's Map packs, additional story/episodes in Asura's Wrath or any extra levels, items and costumes in the game you are playing. Because of this digital age in gaming, developers abuse this DLC methods/practices and "Disc-Locked Content" is born. 

What is this Disc-locked content? This form of DLC locks the game's content that is already in the disc you purchased and you must pay to download the kilobyte-sized file to unlock them, which is a total rip-off. I mean, come on, why are you paying content that you already have? Real DLC contain the words "Downloadable" and "Content" meaning it should be files downloaded in megabytes/gigabytes in size, not a single unlock code or syntax in kilobytes. The company that's most notorious in this Disc-Locked Content practice is Capcom because of thieir Street Fighter X Tekken controversy, it is also rumored that their other games pre or post-SFxT also contains locked content (Dragon's Dogma, Resident Evil 6). Now they are correcting their mistakes which is good.

I have a little theory about another form of locked game content. I think the patches we downloaded already contains DLC files and we need to buy and download another unlock code to get it. It's kinda looks like a horrifying child of Dowloadable Content and Disc-locked Content. This is just a theory until it is proven.

Back to Dowloadable Content topic... games like Batman: Arkham City give DLC expansions that are bang for a buck with all that additional missions, characters and gameplay. It feels like the glory days of expansion packs, this is the right way to do DLC, plus other developers offer free DLC. If other companies can't do this then they should just turn their content into Unlockable Content, where the player must do certain game conditions to unlock stuff in the game, that way, the game can last for a long time depending on the player if he/she is persistent and/or a completionist.