The Scourge of the Season Pass February 10, 2014

With all the paid DLC coming out for major game releases, why not pay for all of a game’s content at once and get all the DLC at a reduced price?  Since around 2011, publishers started offering players the chance to buy a Season Pass with their game.  For the customer, they sound good in theory.  Not only can it be cheaper for your wallet, it can be a lot easier than having to navigate though a dozen individual downloads, sorting through downloadable videos, demos and avatar clothing, and being really careful not to repurchase any redundant content by accident.  Just buy a Season Pass and all the downloadable content will unlock in your game automatically as it gets released.  Every time you boot up your game you’ll get a small pop up when new content is available.  From there you can immediately download it without having to pay any extra money.  It couldn’t be simpler.  It also works well for the game’s developers.  By getting money in advance for content they are working on, it can finance future game development and ensure post-release content for a game will be more likely to see a release.

So if Season Passes are a win on both sides, why is this article titled The Scourge of the Season Pass?  Well because not everything in theory works when put into practice, and as I plan to explain further in this article, every once in a while game developers and publishers can get a bit greedy.  This system, once a benefit for gamers, is now becoming an issue.  Let’s look at our recent gaming history and find out why.

Season Passes are nothing new to the gaming industry.  Episodic games have used a similar payment option since games were delivered by shareware, and more recently when Telltale Games started work on the first season of Sam & Max in 2006.  Instead of charging for each game episode individually, Telltale offered a second payment option while the episodes are still under development and promised customers who paid for this second option access to all the game’s episodes as soon as they got released.  The price for this second payment option would still be a reasonable amount more than just one episode would cost, but less than what the consumer would have paid had they bought each episode individually as they got released.  By offering this simple common sense payment option, Telltale Games became a powerhouse during the Episodic Gaming Boom, whereas other larger developers like Valve Software and Ritual Entertainment failed to capitalize in it.  To this day, I still stand by the statement that had the SiN: Episodes offered a similar payment plan, Ritual Entertainment would still be around and further SiN: Episodes would have gotten developed past the first one.

So what are the problems with Season Passes?  First off, they’re getting incredibly overpriced, especially for games on the latest consoles. The Season Pass for Dead Rising 3 costs $29 US, and while Capcom is promising to release a series of Single Player expansion missions for that game, the Dead Rising 3 Season Pass is still ten dollars more expensive than the Season Pass prices of most other games are, even other games on the Xbox One.  Dead Space 3 also offered a Season Pass right after it was released, but all that was included with it was some extra weapons and armor that EA had already released on Day One and was planning to sell individually.  You’re not exactly paying in advance for future content when it is already out on Day One.  Since EA was already bundling DLC codes for similar content inside new copies of the game, EA should have released their Season Pass’s content free to anyone who preordered the game (or bought the game’s ultra rare Dev Team Edition).  Some extra weapons and armor didn’t make for much of a Season Pass.  When EA released Dead Space 3’s Single-Player expansion pack to wrap up the game’s cliffhanger ending, they charged separately for it.

There are other concerns with Season Passes being offered for sale so early, and that is “what if the game’s developer cancels future DLC development due to poor sales?”  It’s almost like a catch-22.  You don’t know if you should pay the developer in advance for extra content after a game’s release because if the developer cancels their post-release content you don’t know what will happen to your money, meanwhile the developer can’t fund post release content for their game because not enough of their customers purchased Season Passes.  Recently, there has been a lot of news about this problem because WB Games has cancelled all future DLC for the Wii U version of Batman: Arkham Origins, even though they were selling a Season Pass for it.  Fortunately, Wii U gamers who had purchased a Season Pass for Batman: Arkham Origins were automatically refunded their money, but there’s no guarantee in a digital market what can happen to your money if a publisher can’t deliver on it’s promises, even if they already have your money.  The default stated policy on digital content through the various online marketplaces is NO REFUNDS.

Then there are the other times when the content covered by the Season Pass just stops for no reason.  For some reason the final DLC for Halo 4 was not included with the Season Pass, forcing Season Pass adopters to have to shell out an extra ten dollars for the game’s last downloadable content release.  If you’re going to sell me a Season Pass, INCLUDE EVERYTHING!  If you can’t include everything, don’t offer the Pass at all.  Many other Season Passes, like the Season Pass for Gears of War 3, while it offered new multiplayer maps and a single player expansion, it did not include any of the premium weapon skins that were put for sale at launch.  If you wanted to obtain them, you had to buy them separately, and since there were a lot of them up for sale on the day of the game’s launch, buying all of them could be quite expensive.  Since the weapon skins serve no function other than aesthetics, I’m sure a lot of players were angry Epic dared to charge for them for it in the first place.  They should have been unlockable content, or offered with the Season Pass.

Well, how do we make this better?  Well, I believe a Season Pass should be included with all Collector’s Edition releases of a game.  Obviously if the game in question is not getting a Collector’s Edition release, you don’t need to include a Season Pass with a regular edition, but if the game is getting some form of a CE at a premium price point, a Season Pass code should be bundled with it.  Since Halo 3’s Legendary Edition was released in 2007, Collector’s Editions have gotten incredibly expensive, and in a lot of cases recently their high price cannot justify the exclusive content that was included with it.  By including a Season Pass with the game’s Collector’s Edition, you will probably get more demand for the premium release at launch, and consumers will consider it a very good deal.  Games like Halo 4, God of War: Ascension, heck even Forza Motorsport 5, released with Season Pass codes bundled inside their Collector’s Edition releases, and they greatly justified their prices along with the rest of the exclusive content that came with each game.  Sure the redeemable codes included with the Collector’s Editions were labeled something other than Season Passes, but the codes offered the same function a Season Pass did.  Why isn’t this done with every Collector’s Edition?

Also, as I said earlier, if you’re going to offer a Season Pass for sale, make sure it includes everything the game offers.  The Season Pass for The Last of Us, while not included with the game’s Collector’s Editions, is without a doubt one of the best Season Passes currently offered on the market.  Not only are both of the game’s multiplayer map packs included with the Season Pass, an entirely new single-player campaign, an exclusive feature-length making-of documentary and all of the paid premium multiplayer avatar content is included with the Pass.  Naughty Dog really did a good job planning that one out, and it puts into question why couldn’t Gears of War 3’s Season Pass offer the premium weapon skins?

Or you know, you could just go back to the early PC days and make all of a game’s DLC free.  People have been asking about that since Horse Armor was put up for sale in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  Offering post-release DLC without charging extra for it isn’t like offering the content for no money.  People still would need to purchase the full version of your game to use the DLC, but if you continue to support your game, more and more players will want to pick it up just based on word of mouth.  It would increase goodwill and bring loyalty to your studio, publisher and brand.  The Witcher‘s developers had that philosophy when they were developing the first game on the PC, and any time they rereleased the game at retail with new content, they offered that content for free on their website to anyone who had previously purchased the game.  Recently, the only way I’ve seen players get a game’s DLC as part of purchasing a game new is by purchasing a Game of the Year Edition.  While a GOTY version of a game can be a good deal for new adopters of a game, it is a bit of a disrespectful slap in the face to players who paid full price for the game on day one.  In fact, I’ve purchased several Game of the Year Editions of games I already owned (and in some cases already bought $100+ Collector’s Editions of) just because rebuying a GOTY edition of the game at retail was a better financial deal then buying all of the game’s DLC was online.  When having your customers rebuy your game is a better deal than purchasing all the downloadable content for it, developers need to take a step back and look at the new market they have created.

Please, do it quickly.