cause this is how companies are

This isnt how you respect your customers.

What respect, I'm finding it more funny you guys are BITCHING about things that DONT CHANGE the game. Sadly folks are stupid, its why they can do this, its why they can do this. I mean really folks bought EXTRA costumes that do nothing, while looking at DOW2 Retribution the race packs added weapons that are alot stronger...they did SOMETHING, but here you guys are bitching about costumes that do NOTHING.

"What respect, I'm finding it more funny you guys are BITCHING about things that DONT CHANGE the game. Sadly folks are stupid, its why they can do this, its why they can do this. I mean really folks bought EXTRA costumes that do nothing, while looking at DOW2 Retribution the race packs added weapons that are alot stronger...they did SOMETHING, but here you guys are bitching about costumes that do NOTHING. "

"Sadly folks are stupid, its why they can do this, its why they can do this."


"its why they can do this, its why they can do this."

I cant take you seriously.

you shouldnt
you shouldnt HAVE taken me seriously in the first place
but you did like an idiot
Valve realize Folks are idiots, what evidence...TF2. Folks are so god willing KNOWING that the weapon/hat exist for free in game...would buy it...when they do nothing. They are willing to buy 1 single item that does nothing...for up to 9usd

independent companies realize "hey we do something with valve...folks will stupidly buy our games and we make money.

as long as their is stupid folks, they can continue to do this.
but again, folks will always bitch about something, just like how folks bitch about Valve releasing L4D2 as a seperate game when they thought it would be better as an DLC for L4D.


wait no, in general folks will ALWAYS BITCH ABOUT SOMETHING VALVE DOES

>baww People bitch!
>the reason they bitch is because they want more!!

I still cant take you seriously.

again you arent suppose to, you are to NEVER take anyone seriously as thats the smart thing thus you ARE doing the smart thing on not taking me seriously, but you are doing the DUMB thing on telling it to me.

you guys are complaining about something that really doesnt change the game that exist IN game.
You want all that stuff that do nothing for free thats fine, but Valve come to realize some folks are willing to pay for it as they probably dont know the files exist in game already. problem is these things do nothing, they do not change the game in the damn long run. Folks would be the same way with TF2 if all the stuff did nothing but you had to buy em. Heres the thing, eventually folks would go "why would I care I dont have this weapon if its JUST the same as the original I already have...it doesnt change the game at all.

Hat is complaining about something that ISNT needed or change the game, telling folks to not buy the game just cause of that. I find that rather rather stupid but if hat needs shiny things well..fine, I dont and I'm sure lots of people are not touching any of those stuff as they know it doesnt change the game at all.

So far portal 2 is amazing. On steam I got the potato sack portal pack thing for $85 14 games in all. 13 indies 1 portal 2. a tf2 hat (dunno why I havnt gotten it yet, the hat) and a portal 2 skin (don't seem to have ether)

Oh but didn't you know?

Apparantly if you got the potato sack and collected all the potato's you get Portal2 for free and ENTIRE VALVE COLLECTION.

Yes... They FUCKED us loyal customers and people with a new account get $150 of free games.

No you idiot.

INSIDE portal 2, there's a cash shop with 85$ worth of DLC.

this has NOTHING to do with the potato bundle.

I know, but I didn't bother doing the potato thing because I got the portal bundle 2 days before it launched. So there wasn't much of a point in trying to get the potatoes. They didn't screw us over ether... They said they would give us something if we found all the potatoes and thats what it was. People who got all the potatoes got the bundle again for free and the entire valve collection. So they could send the extra bundle to a friend and keep the valve collection.

Also they announced it to the public and was all over the internet. So they didn't screw us over it was just one of those little gifts people give when someone does something that is achievable aka being able to get all 36 potatoes form 13 different games.

There is this thing called Capitalism that people seem to forget about, it's kind of what most of civilization is based on. Companies like Steam aren't in the charity business and they don't have to give away everything just because a vocal minority seems to think they should. They want to make money and at least you're getting something of value (the Potato Sack bundle) for that money rather than just paying for the DLC and nothing else. Not to mention by tying an A-list hit to a bunch of game from independent developers you're ultimately helping the underdog.

I think you are mixing up cash shops and the potato bundle.

You're right of course. They can do whatever they want, sell it for however much they want and then do exactly as they please with the profits. Nothing in the world can stop them unless they break the law.

But of course, I'm equally free to judge them, call them out on their shitty deals and tell people "Please, please, please don't support this crap."

Well welcome to the 21st century, that's how companies do it today.

The things is that DLC has become an accepted way to include new content for many users and developers. Not that everyone does it well, but it is accepted. It's a continued revenue stream after the initial purchase. In this case Valve is helping independent developers get sales and get noticed, so "this crap" is the 800lbs gorilla helping these otherwise unknown companies get sales and the users not only get 13 other games, but also their A-list release as well.

Not to mention not all games or game companies do this. Valve, they company you're up in arms about, pushed out all of the DLC in the Left 4 Dead games as free updates on the PC. (Microsoft wouldn't let them do it for free on the X360.) Quite a few games function like this, actually. Heck, despite the tons of DLC and expansions for The Sims 3 they also put out quite a few free content updates for users without the expansions just to help keep the code-base sane.

Plus, DLC represent a continued effort to improve the game, even the "zero-day" stuff which were under development after the main package of the game was feature-frozen. Games, and other programs, are frozen on the features they will provide long before release in order to have a fixed feature set to develop toward. (Linux distros on a six-month cycle tend to freeze about two months before release.) So if a game company freezes features, say, six months before release many of the developers suddenly have nothing to do, so these days instead of laying off talent they'll have them work on DLC. Plus there's often tons of "I made five versions of X, but we only needed one" that often turns into DLC.

Chances are without paid-for DLC game prices would either rise quite a bit (and they're already insane) or the quality would drop further (and quality if a bit iffy anyway).

That's like saying all the optional extras from the top-spec BMW should be in the basic package! Of course they shouldn't be! It cost Valve money to produce that content, you should pay money to get access it. Life is not free.

I dont think you know what Greed is.

People accepting Business practices like this is a big fuck you to people who actually want to play their game without spending 1,000$ just to get the full game complete (buying all the DLC)




And nigga please " it costs Valve money to produce that content"

And paying 25$ for a re-skin of a horse mount in World of Warcraft is TOTALLY acceptable? right? You derpshit. 2dollar animations for your characters that last a good 3 seconds or 5 Dollar hats and 10 dollar gimmicky shit that can be made in Blender/Maya/3dmax Studio in about 5 minutes.


Busta, please.

you just made my day saying "nigga please" because I use it too outside of just joking around, i.e. srs convo.

Paying $25 for a re-skin is just dumb, but paying $85 for 14 games (~$6 each) seems reasonable to me (if you like/want those games), after all, you're paying for the GAMES, the skins & hat are just freebies thrown in to entice people.

If someone wants the skins really badly, but not the 13 other games in the bundle, and buys it just for those freebies, then they obviously think those two things are worth the extra money (more fool them imo). What's that phrase? A fool and his money are soon parted?

I wont be buying the bundle (I couldn't care less about most of the other 13 games, nor the freebies on offer), but I will be buying the game stand-alone. Maybe if more people did that, Valve would see that more people want a nicely priced stand-alone game rather than novelty bundles?

Except that I would hope your BMW's extras are decently priced in comparison to their line production cost and initial development cost.

But right here it's so disproportional that it's a total joke. $85 of scraps that took next to no time to make and absolutely nothing to reproduce. You could buy entire games instead of this shit.


Meanwhile, I take a look to my right and the first game I see is Bayonetta. In time for its release, several costumes and two extra characters were made, put on the disc and provided at no additional cost. They could have sold them and said "But it takes effort to create these things, we need money." But they didn't. And that's good value.

If you can show me the part where this case, Portal 2 charging ridiculous amounts for so little, is actually justified, instead of calling upon bad analogies, I'd love to see it.

Or how EA always seems to have DLC lined up and ready at the 1 month after release mark, to get people to buy more.

I don't think I understand what you're getting at, the only package of Portal 2 I can find which is about $85 (I'm using a different currency) is this one - http://store.steampowered.com/sub/7880

Now, that's 14 games for $85 (~$6 each) and as a FREE gift you get some TF2 hat thing (I don't play TF2 enough to know what this means) and a Portal 2 co-op skin (couldn't care less, personally). How is that any different to buying a special edition of a film/game to get an extra DVD or two of documentaries and getting free concept art cards? If you want the art cards, then you have to buy the special edition.

Maybe my view is slanted by the fact I couldn't care any less about these two freebies you get by buying the bundle and will be buying the game stand-alone.


Of course, if this is not the bundle you're on about, then please link me to the one we are discussing.

It's a bundle inside Portal 2 itself, one that's just like the item packs for TF2. Currently discounted to $35, it lists a regular price of $85. It contains nothing but unlock codes for stuff you should already have access to.

Ah, well, that is quite a bit different to buying 14 games and getting freebies!

Too late, allready got it, going to play in a minute, but adding dlc's before the game is released fucking sucks. Hard. It just shows its purely about the money. Even though it was 10% off before release...

I don't see why people can't just play the game without any extra aesthetic things. Yea we all know what capitalism is and were taught about it briefly in elementary/highschool, doesn't mean sheeple have to go along with it. All of you who buy portal 2 anyways + overpriced shit are literally sheeple, and should be ashamed of yourselves. :/

Put that money to better use at least, even if it's something marginally less trivial like buying another actual game.

OK, so it would be nice if those skins and animations where freely available in the game, but can you really fault them for it? They are a company after all, and companies tend to want to make money. It's not like they are withholding swaths of levels cut out from the game - just a few character customizations for the co-op game.

The solo game is stated to be twice as long as the original - which was three hours so we got a respectable six hours, while the co-op is said to be the same so we got a total of 12 hours game time altogether, give or take an hour or so. Is that not enough for £30? Oh, and it's a really, really good game.

So, are you really advocating for people to pirate the game (as you stated, play it but don't buy it) just because you can't stand not having a companion cube skin? A little dinky beanie hat? Or is the sight of cute little flags on the back that is causing your blood to boil?

Doesn't matter a damn bit what the content is, it's stuff that you could be having fun with being held back just because the company wants more than its fair share of money. Fundamentally, this is wrong. For that, they can go fuck themselves.

It's not unfair. It is not wrong. The shop content is purely additional skins for the co-op campaign. It has no implications on the game at all - it won't change how the puzzles work, how much enjoyable it is. It wouldn't make any difference to the co-op game at all if they didn't do the skins in the first place. You can enjoy co-op just as much with the regular and hat-less characters than if you had any of that stuff.

Look at Dragon Age 2. From day one there was a payable DLC for an additional party character and his story. His tailored opinions and stance on the mage vs templar has a direct impact to the main story line. That is an example of a company being greedy by cutting out a content and releasing it from day one.

But look at Portal 2. For my lovely £30 of hard cash I have six hours of solo gaming and another six hours of co-op. That's a lot more story-line hours than say, Bulletstorm (another game I payed £30 for which I found to be money well spent). I did not expect that I could customize the co-op characters, nor did Valve mention any of that in their trailers or pre-release game information. They do not have an obligation to provide the hats and skins for free, and it has no impact what so ever on how enjoyable the Co-op campaign is.

What, you don't think extra costumes are cool? I certainly enjoy taking on different outfits in Bayonetta, or getting particular accessories for particular weapons. Killing angels while wearing a set of flaming cat ears and tail, that's awesome.

I got Resident Evil 5 Gold recently, too. Played through it with a friend with me as Chris in his post-apocalyptic biker wear and her as Sheva with something dumb and revealing. We got a few good laughs out of wearing such silly things.

I wouldn't have bought Army of Two if you couldn't do dumb shit like playing air guitar with your buddy for no good reason.

These little frills, they add something. I love them. They make games just a little more special. But when they're made and then held back from anyone who's unwilling to pay ridiculous prices, that's supreme dickery. They've done nothing to earn that extra money, especially when bigger games provide them freely and especially when it's a day one DLC cash grab.

I didn't buy Portal 2 because co-op characters could wear hats, but because I like that portal puzzling fun. The additional skins are extra. They are not required to get the full enjoyment of the Portal 2 campaigns and Valve are under no obligation to provide it for free. After all, these skins and hats and gestures isn't something they rustled up during their lunch break. They payed artists, modelers and animators to create those little bits and they do not come cheap.

They are a few quid each - the price of a pint or two - and you can even trade the skins and hats with other people, but if you consider that makes Portal 2 a game not worth it's asking price, then you are completely missing the reason people are buying Portal 2 for.

Ah, yet more gamers crying over the fact that Companies should give everything away for free, or raging over shit that means absolutely nothing. And well, we've got both here! "There are SKINS out there that I can't have for free! That totally ruins my enjoyment of this really great game, becuase I can't dick around looking like something else! That totally kills the game for me, and you shouldn't enjoy it either!"

way to miss the point. selling shitty little gimmicks for retarded amounts of money is the problem. Like those vending machines where you pop in a quarter and it gives you a small little toy. This DLC thing is like that same vending machine asking for 20 bucks a pop.

Those "shitty little gimmicks" are completely unnecessary and not required for one to fully enjoy Portal 2. They are purely graphical in nature and do not change any of the puzzles or game mechanics. Valve could have just as easily not bother making any, but they did. They payed artists, modelers and animators and I doubt they did that for free.

Let me stop you right there at that second sentence. Instead of that "valve could..." sentence, replace it with "and they're charging a comparatively ridiculous amount despite anticipating many, many sales."

Let me remind you of my second sentence: They are purely graphical in nature and do not change any of the puzzles or game mechanics. Portal 2 is not an MMO. It is not a social focused game. It is a first person puzzle game with a co-op campaign. Valve anticipated many, many sales for their puzzle game and anticipating that people will buy the game for the solo and co-op puzzles, not for the ability for robots to wear hats.

Exactly. Auxiliary add-ons that are totally meaningless, except for players that wanna dick around will looking like a rodeo clown or whatever. They neither add nor subtract anything from the complete game. Bitching about the extra shit that is just that EXTRA, that they want to charge for is a high point of idiocy in my book. If it was something like making you pay extra for actual content that actually effects the game in a meaningful way, like say making you pay for the final level. Then yeah, bitch about them screwing you over. But for costumes? You really need to sort out your priorities if selling extra costumes are what gets your panties bunched.

I wasn't planning on getting the game any time soon actually but it does seem to be a bit high priced for some skins and animations. Can't say there were many people pleased with the $8 price tag on the Dawn of War II: Retribution DLC either. That was just a quick little reskin but anyone who had bought the collector's edition got it for free so I guess it balances out. The other issues with skins I had was the Bad Company 2 Spec Ops pack which was only four new skins for $5. Had there been new maps involved I'd have sprung for that but I'm not going to pay $5 for just four skins. But oh well it's a company thing and most people that buy them at those prices are younger people with parents credit cards.

I'm just gonna wait for Portal 2 to go on sale for like $10 or Free. I never bothered with Portal 1 till it was Free so I doubt I'm going to jump on Portal 2 any sooner.

SKIDROW is your friend.