Connectivity - On DLCs and Microtransactions

To be fair it is understandable that the companies selling the games will want to protect their interests, ultimately damaging the development team itself if the game fails to reach a certain sales quota. To remedy this as well as extend the lifespan of a title after it has been released new content ends up being released. This started off as simple (and free) mods and add-ons in the 90s and early 2000s, as well as expansion packs for content far too large to be considered simple additions to the game; these often contained new gameplay, loads of fixes as well as modifications to the original to accommodate these new elements. Years pass and the prominence of connectivity became more widespread and powerful enough to be supported on consoles as well, allowing publishers to produce and release all of this under the umbrella term of downloadable content, or DLC.

As soon as the dominance of DLC had been established its usage was received with mixed results; some of the more questionable choices included horse armour for your horses in Oblivion to disrupting Dragon Age's immersion entirely with the Warden's Keep DLC advertising in-game, and that's not even scratching the surface about the implications involved about withholding content ransom by having it on the disc but denying it to the player. This raises far too many questions, of particular note regarding what you really spent your hard-earned money on. After all the majority of these games retail for over fifty pounds (or sixty US dollars) and have the gall to retain portions of the game away from the customer. If so, what do you actually buy? Do you own the game? A broken down version? Have you paid so much money just for the right to play a game? One could write books on the ethical dilemmas presented with these dubious practices.

On the other end we have another business model that does not require you to purchase a game at retail price and funds itself through in-game purchases called microtransactions. The practice is primarily utilised by games applying the "freemium" model, which allows players to play the game at their leisure whenever they want without any costs. If they so choose to acquire extra features in their game all they have to do is exchange real money for a special virtual currency only carrying value in that particular game or game portal like Aeria Games or Nexon. For the most part these currencies offer you extra features such as boosts, cosmetic items and additional utilities. This is all well and good, even aiding certain games when their subscription model failed to keep the game sustainable and in the case of Lord of the Rings Online tripling the revenue. However, the key word here is "free"; the reason this system works for most of these games is that they're readily and easily accessible for new players. In the instance where microtransactions are added to a game you have paid full retail price for is a blatant money grab.

This all boils down to why players would opt to go for a pirated copy of a game rather than the original.