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Capcom Also Targeted by Better Business Bureau
They should call themselves the BUSY Business Bureau—because they have been. It seems as though gamers have been making plenty of calls to the North American consumer watchdog organization. Not only did we find out that, yes, the BBB has declared that EA misled consumers regarding the recent controversy over the Mass Effect 3 ending, but now they’re going after Capcom and their so-called “on disc DLC.”
The news comes courtesy of GamesIndustry, which posted the story yesterday. As a result of over 30 complaints logged with the bureau against Capcom since March 27 this year, the BBB has downgraded Capcom from an A+ to a B-rated business. The complaints, it seems, were classified as “advertising/sales issues” and “problems with product/service,” and point to gamers’ dissatisfaction with the fact that Capcom sells consumers content for extra cash even though it’s already on the disc itself.
Capcom, for what it’s worth, offers up a defense of the practice, having issued a statement to the bureau:
“There is effectively no distinction between the DLC being ‘locked’ behind the disc and available for unlocking at a later date, or being available through a full download at a later date, other than delivery mechanism.”
And, you know, the fact that you’re paying for stuff that’s already on the disc that you paid for.
I guess I can sort of understand where Capcom’s coming from, but at the same time, if you’ve got room on the disc to store data and content, I kind of have a hard time believing any justification for breaking it up and reselling access to it to consumers. Especially because, more than any other reason, THIS ROUTINELY PISSES YOUR CUSTOMERS OFF.
Like, it’d be one thing if you were getting away with it for a while and no one really cared, but this is a pretty big deal for most gamers at this point. One would think you’d just say, “Whoops! Ran out of room! Gotta buy this DLC that’s DEFINITELY NOT ON YOUR DISC NOW!” and just let us download the stuff. How much longer do you think Capcom will keep doing this?
Via GamesIndustry
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So BBB just downgraded capcom as a company. My question is: Why should Capcom give a fuck for how well rated is their buisness?
EXCELLENT QUESTION.
There are technical reasons they have to have it on disc –
Since it’s a fighting game, say player 1 buys a DLC character. If it’s not on the disc, the data for that character won’t be there for player 2. If the two are matched up against each other, how will player 2 see the model, textures, etc for player 1?
One option is to make everyone download a patch with the characters in them, then unlock that for the players that buy the characters. However, then you’re making everyone download a huge patch, and that data is resident on everyone’s system as well — just locked out for people that don’t pay extra.
Between the two, having it on-disc prevents people from downloading a gigantic ass patch, and that’s the only difference.
EXCELLENT EXPLANATION.
Everyone is smarter than me.
yes as good as it is that it stops the need for downloading a patch the fact that they have it on the disk begs the question why not just release it included with the game. Regrettably the business model for most game companies now is to make as much dlc as possible as it is more profitable, then then it leads to the question are they now deliberately leaving content out just so it can be charged at a later date. if yes they could at least try to hide that by not having it on disc rather than saying yes its here on disc we had it made before launch but you still need to give us even more money to access that content.
that is why we have little things called updates, don’t put it on the disk but when it’s time to make that character available you put out a patch.
The reason they included it on disk rather than future update is probably to make MORE profits, since you save on bandwidth costs.
Regardless if it’s on the disk, it still seems far too money driven to me. Why can’t companies just provide reasonable deals on their games, and rely on the worth of their games, not their shrewd and sometimes shady marketing tactics :<
Damit you beat me to it
wonder how long its going to be before capcoms rating gets dropped against once the new ending for azura’s wrath hits the market.
If DLC has to be on the disc for it to work, then it isn’t DLC. You know, because you don’t need to download it. What Capcom is going is driven exclusively by greed, plain and simple.
So basically what your saying is they only sold you part of the game rather than the complete game and they want you to pay even more for the complete game on the disc you already bought. Horse Armor anyone? Sell the whole game at launch time and not just part of it. It also saves them money since they don’t have to have it download from their servers so they can use smaller pipes for awhile. So they want to save money on bandwidth and then charge you for what is already on the disc. This is just pure greed at the expense of the game and consumers.
what if, hypotheticaly, they found a way to make the disks memory larger and then store the dlc on there. would that be wrong?
BBB is a joke anyways. Much like how Metacritic scores can be skewed by companies offering incentives to reviews, you can purchase a membership to the BBB and have your companies’ rating improved. Square Enix has shit customer service fro FFXI & XIV, but maintains a decent rating because they fun the BBB. Its all publicity bullshit.
spelling and punctuation errors brought to by Three Olives Cake Vodka.