The fact that I have a choice on whether or not to buy it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a shitty business practice. To quote IOI’s own website: “A Season of Sin can last anywhere between 4-6 weeks and include Escalations, Featured Contracts and Elusive Targets.” These are all things we’ve previously gotten for free. Now I don’t inherently have a problem with paid DLC, but the fact that they’re charging $30 for some escalations and reskins is a bit ridiculous.
Hitman 2 Gold was, if I recall correctly, $40. That gave us:
- Two brand new, fully developed maps
- New escalations and unlocks to go with the new maps
- Two new sniper maps
- Four special assignments
- New cosmetic stuff (suits, reskins, etc)
And now, for nearly the same price, all they’re giving us is some escalations and some reskins. You don’t think that perhaps, now that they’ve developed some brand loyalty, and they’ve tested the waters with the Deluxe Pack, they’ve realized they can get away with cheap low effort content becuase people will buy it anyway? I gave them the benefit of the doubt when they cheaped out on certain things in Hitman 2 since they got screwed over by Square Enix and Hitman 1 didn’t sell too well. But Hitman 3 has sold excellently well and they’ve developed and published it entirely on their own. There’s no excuse this time.
You’re right that I have a choice whether or not to buy the DLC, as does everybody. But that doesn’t mean I can’t voice my disapproval, nor is it a justification for a company making a low-effort cash grab. If when the full DLC does drop it turns out to be amazing and I was totally wrong, then great. But as it stands, you’re naively defending a crappy business practice, which is turn is going to encourage them to do it again. Corporations aren’t your friend, nor do they care about making people happy. All they care about is making money. Everything else is just a means to an end to help them get that money. Never forget that.