You Shall Not Season Pass

Batman Arkham Knight's season pass is set to cost over thirty quid. This is a bit silly, isn't it?

This isn't a new occurrence, a revelation or a surprise. It was announced today that the season pass for Batman: Arkham Knight, the fourth game in Warner Bros' series of Batman games, would cost £32.99. This is how games work now, and it's sad that I feel so apathetic about it that I just accept it with a shrug. I feel in the minority though, as all quarters of the internet are still very angry at the increasing amount of piecemealing the average gaming fan has to put up with.

There are some valid arguments for paid DLC. For the player, it can bring extra content, extending a great gaming experience. For the developers, it allows them to make a little extra money from a product they have already produced if that product is deserving of it in quality. For publishers, it's an incentive to avoid trading the game in as soon as you're finished with it. There's been some very good, expensive but worthwhile DLC over the years. Battlefield's premium passes are always excellent value, Bioshock 2 and Infinite had good single-player content added to them, and Bethedsa have produced some of their finest moments in Tamriel and the Wasteland in additional content.

The problems begin when you realise all these arguments are only valid in an ideal world. In reality, DLC has become abusive and witholding for the consumer and is actually reaching the point where it damages the reputation of games. Games that don't deserve DLC get it by the bucketload, and games that do deserve it often don't get content to match the original product's quality.

The very concept of DLC is now being used as a selling point of the game. "Spend 30 pounds more on Arkham Knight!" Warner Bros cry.

"What am I spending the extra 30 pounds on?" Eager fans reply.

"Oh, I don't know yet. Some time trials and more big adventures for the Bat Man™!" Warner Bros bark back to them.

It's not enough to promise "new story missions, new super-villains, legendary skins, new race tracks" as Warner have done, because consumers have been burned before by trusting companies to deliver. This comes on top of the fact that Arkham Knight, despite a June release date, is still  something of an enigma. We've only seen very limited gameplay footage and little is known about the content of the base game. It's not reasonable to expect customers to pay 150% of the RRP with so little to go on, and promising extra skins if you promise to buy it from a shop like a good little boy as soon as possible makes it even more insulting.

Pre-orders were around for an age, but no longer serve the original purpose. There was a time, before the internet, that getting hold of the most popular games on the day of release might have been a challenge without a pre-order. Now the concept has been adapted as another way of piecemealing the product to you, trying to goad you into buying the game their way. Publishers have you locked in their cell, picking bits off a slice of ham and posting them to you under a slit in the door. "You will take it this way, for it is your only option if you want to eat."

The strangest thing about the abuse of DLC to me is how publishers haven't realised that they've made purchasing a game so profoundly confusing at times that it hurts their sales. Arkham Knight has a base game, a Limited Edition, and a newly-announced Premium Edition. Add pre-order bonuses (Arkham Knight's Harley Quinn DLC) and console-specific bonuses (Arkham Knight's PSN-exclusive Scarecrow DLC), and a $200 Collector's Edition (that doesn't contain the season pass content) to the menu and you've managed to dilute a single product so much that I don't know what I'm buying any more. It's genuinely difficult to work out at a glance how I'm meant to actually get all of the game. What about the loyal fans who already pre-ordered the Limited Edition, logically assuming there'd be no more packages announced? Perhaps befuddling the customer actually is their intent, but even I'm not that cynical.

So it comes down to this: if you don't like it, vote with your feet. There are few more panicky and reactionary industries out there than the gaming industry, which is still halfway mired in the stereotypical nerd culture that it so badly wants to escape so it can wreak havoc on the wallets of the world. We've seen recently the power of gaming fans standing tall to speak out against practices they aren't comfortable with. Do it with season passes. Don't buy the games. It sucks for us, yes, but it's the only way they'll learn.