Yes, that is true. The DLCs were introduced with in game characters rather than messages. Much better

Oblivion GOTY Edition had 5 minutes shutting down DLC pop-ups And so did New Vegas, come to think of it At least Fallout 3 had the messages as not pop-ups.

That's pretty much the job description for being the head of PR.

...this reminds me of when I got the "game of the century" edition of Saint's Row 4 on a Steam sale. Soooooooo many little DLC pop-ups.

What he said.

Pretty much, yes

Though they do have a reputation.
Which direction that affects the purchase decision is everyone's own opinion, though

What's funny is, the season pass isn't even for sale yet. They aren't asking for anything, they've merely laid out their future plans for Fallout 4 and everyone and their mother knee jerk reacted.... as they always do.

You are insulted that they are announcing a product for sale?

Dude, I'll be the first in line to rant if and when they short change those that buy the season pass, but being "insulted" because they offer something for sale at a reported discount (remains to be seen, I agree), takes a bit of "audacity" as well.

LOL LOL LOL LOL

first they arnet insulting us in any way since they arent asking for anything, they just inform us.

Ppl should stop complaining about something that isnt out.

u all making a big QQ about a future plan

The problem is that EVERYONE may get short-changed if they just stop making DLC after they make $40 worth. Knowing they would get full price could entice them to make more DLC if the game's sales exceed expectations. But the Season Pass could put a stop to any and all extra DLC. That hurts EVERYONE.

I'm not mad or upset and I'm sure I'll get my 1,000+ hours out of FO4 (thanks mostly to mods) but season passes are what I expect out of game companies that know their game is going to svck, so they need all the money they can up front before the *&^% hits the fan. I don't believe for a second that Bethesda fits into this category of companies so them using it just seems off from the get go.

I doubt Bethesda's going to change their DLC plans just to avoid giving Season Passers an even better value than promised. Now, maybe if everyone everywhere bought Season Passes, or everyone everywhere was guaranteed to buy all of the DLCs and not just the first one (or the last one, or the little one).

What's 40$ worth though? Do you know? Do any of us know? Nope. What you seemingly have is an irrational fear.. Nothing is going to entice them to do anything, unless they want to. They don't just churn these things out. "Welp, looks like plenty of people bought the season pass. You know those plans for dlc? Yea, just scrap them.... we've already got our money."

What we have is a lot of unknowns. It doesn't matter what we think is worth $40, only what Bethesda thinks is worth $40. And my only fear, is that my coffee is going to get cold if I don't get to it.

What I fear is that if they get enough money before the DLCs are finished, they'll aim not for making better DLC, but for working within the point that will optimize their profits for the money they've already gotten.

Granted, they probably do that anyway, but they at least had to estimate the number of people that would buy it, and would work it from there. There was a direct monetary incentive, not just their reputation, whereas with a season pass I fear that is diminished.

On the other hand, if they use the revenue for the pass to further bolster the production of the DLC, that would be cool. They wouldn't make as much money, but their content could end up being higher quality.

Still seems unfounded to me. I'm no more an industry insider than anyone else here, but it just seems conventional wisdom that DLC production is tied more to development cycles than anything else. They get Fallout 4 finished up, and then it becomes a matter of supporting the game for a time and producing as much DLC as possible before it's time for that team to start work on the next game (presumably another Elder Scrolls I'd imagine.)

I just can't see any company going "Well, we put out two DLCs - what should we do now? Well, we have all these guys on salary... I guess we'll just pay them to sit around instead of continuing to put out DLC. Clearly that's our best business choice, because heaven forbid that small margin of people who bought a Season Pass get free content even though we could sell a third DLC for full price and those who didn't get the Season Pass might still buy it, or it's existence may entice other people to buy more Season Passes. We had plans for more DLC, and we'd make money off a third one - but no, we'll just sit around twiddling our thumbs because... reasons."

I can understand a worry that we may end up with a Skyrim situation again, where they had wanted to put out more DLC than they did, but support and patching issues ate up too much development time before they ran out of space in their timetable. But the idea that they'd just sit on their hands and not do anything just because a small segment of the market has a Season Pass doesn't make any sense to me...

People are get mad about the DLC announcement because it is before the game is released.

Yeah, like it is a big surprise that Bethesda is doing DLC for F4.

Skyrim sold 20 million units.

They seem to be thinking Fallout 4 can do better than that.

Why would they short change the DLC?

It is certainly not for a lack of money to produce it.

Bethesda will be floating on a sea of cash.

Even with some of that 20 million getting a the season past, they would still have million of sales of the individual DLCs.

If anything I think Bethesda was trying to do something nice for the fans.

Let them have all the F4 DLC at one discounted price.

And of course they get yelled at for their efforts.

You are missing the fact that beyond your "get the money and run" scenario, the season pass has another potential economic benefit for a company that that typically has extreme profit surges (game and DLC releases). It potentially spreads DLC income over a longer time frame starting as soon as they accept season pass orders. Business want a relatively continual increase in revenue from month to month, not a HUGE spike (game release) followed by several much smaller months (between release and DLC release) and then another large influx of revenue (DLC releases). The season pass will bring in some of that DLC money earlier and still allow for sales when it does release. This is all about how the money comes in, not about how much product is going to get made.

Pre-orders kind of do the same thing, but they report those sales at time of release to generate the impressive sales numbers.

Yes, both do ask a consumer to pay for something before they get it, but it IS a consumer choice in both cases.

I'm not going to re-write anything so I'll just post what I said on the CD a few days ago:

"Eh, I don't get why people are whining. You put your faith in a company their product won't be garbage and you get a discount. It's entirely optional and you'll get to choose which DLC you want. Sounds like entitled whining of "I don't WANT to buy the Season Pass but I should get the same discount that guy who did is getting!"

"Pre-Orders and Season Passes exist for a reason: Video Games at the end of the day are a business. I agree that there is a notorious existence of exploitation of consumers and micro-transactions, but to label all things Pre-Order and Season Pass bad is dumb. That's like complaining all shows are bad because one other show is bad. Bethesda's only, in my opinion, terrible DLC was Mothership Zeta. Beyond that, I'm willing to put my faith in Bethesda that their DLC will be good. Will I BUY the season pass? Not likely, but I have enough faith in Bethesda's level of quality to find it worth the risk. Besides, most of their DLCs minus a few like the notorious Oblivion Horse Armour DLC have all been nicely sized and fun to play. So it's not like some of the companies where we get a 'DLC' that's one mission in a pre-existing space of the map. Again, I feel like a lot of the complaining is just entitlement in the community and people are pulling the Godwin's Law of gaming, IE: "They're making us PAY for stuff? CAPITALIST FATCATS!"."

If your only response is "The evil corporations, man!" I'm not going to reply to you because that kind of ignorance already says you're not going to look at it reasonably.

Your example and your point contradict each other. Not having a Season Pass and spreading out the payments for DLC as they are made would spread out the revenue better. The Season Pass does exactly what you said a company wants to avoid, HUGE spike in revenue right up front.

First off, If they only made $40 worth of DLC and you got it for $30, you'd still be getting $10 off the a la carte price. So this is a non-issue..

Secondly, I gotta put out again. Why, in the name of all that is good, would they just decide after a most momentous launch to end it all with crap DLC?
What's the incentive? This is a direct question- no skating required.

1st, I'd rather pay $50 for $50 of DLC than $30 for $40 of DLC and no more are made.

2nd, what are you talking about? What crap DLC? Skating?

It's a flawed assumption that Bethesda will stop releasing any DLC when they hit the "magic" $40 limit. There will still be a significant amount of people not getting the season pass (here in this thread they seem to be the majority ), so Bethesda will have a big enough market to make DLCs even beyond the $40 limit.

Them Squeakers sure do whine 馃榿

Yes, but season pass isn't going to determine how much DLC they put out. It just isn't going to work that way. There are other marketplaces for DLC, which don't rely on digital downloads. (See: other season pass thread- 25% of nation without reliable home internet) For these markets, more DLC means more profit.


I'm asking you what their incentive would be in putting out bad/not enough DLC, when the rest of the game has had so much effort put into it.
What, specifically, would they have to gain?

Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt I'll get my money's worth no matter what they do. Currently I'm getting something like pennies per hour on Skyrim. I do have faith in them for that. I just don't like the practice for reasons given and it's more of a practice I see with other companies that off/on put out crappy games and they know it. While what I mentioned is something that 'could' happen, I honestly don't think it will. Course now I'll always wonder after they put out the last DLC if we could have gotten one more if it wasn't for the SP. But little can be done about that at this point. Just hope they don't just become all about the money like EA and others.

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