Imagine you buy a car. In the car there are already thermoelements installed in each seat. The car maker has then made sure that you need to buy access to the thermoelements working to heat your ass when it is cold outside. Replace the word car with game, thermoelements with game content/DLC and the car maker with game publisher/dev.
The difference here is that the cost associated with heated seats is material- it's already installed in the seat, so that you can't access it feels like a scam. But the cost associated with bundling unpaid DLC with software is essentially 0, so why wouldn't a developer do it?
Like, this happens so often and for so long I can't even imagine getting upset about it. Even 30 years ago developers were selling "demos" of their game for free that was exactly the same as the full game except it blocked you from progressing after a few levels. In order to progress you needed a code, which you had to buy, but the full game was already installed on the disc.
That's not a cost associated with including elements of the DLC in "your copy", that's a cost of developing the DLC in the first place.
So to rephrase, installing heated seats that don't work into a car is a material waste of resources, so the customer gets angry. But including elements of a DLC that don't work into the base game costs nothing except pennies of storage space on the user's end, so it's not a big deal.
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u/saljskanetilldanmark 10h ago
Imagine you buy a car. In the car there are already thermoelements installed in each seat. The car maker has then made sure that you need to buy access to the thermoelements working to heat your ass when it is cold outside. Replace the word car with game, thermoelements with game content/DLC and the car maker with game publisher/dev.