Civ VI Troubles Me.
So, I’m a moderate fan of the Civilization franchise. When Civ: Revolution came to the 360, I bought a copy on a whim and really enjoyed myself. From that point on I’ve pour a ton of hours over several games in the series and enjoyed every minute of it.
When Civ VI was announced I was of course all over that, planning on picking it up on day 1, however there was something that then stopped my enthusiasm cold: One of the empires, The Aztecs, would be locked out to anyone who didn’t preorder for the first 90 days.
I fear that this is going to be the start of a new trend for games: where no longer are players tempted to preorder with promises of bonus content (which may or may not become paid DLC down the road) but by totally locking out existing content and basically threatening the player to preorder or else.
Now, I’ve heard the arguments supporting this: “Oh, it’s only 90 days” “There are plenty of other empires to play as” “You’re not really losing anything”, and while all of that is true: what if this becomes a trend? Remember that microtransactions, DRM, and preordering itself all started out as innocent and easily ignorable things and look how they snowballed. If you give publishers an inch, they will take a mile.
Game publishers, no matter much much you may love their content, are not your friends. They do not care about you.They care about your money, and if you send the message that they can, instead of inciting you to preorder with extra content, instead LOCK AWAY main features of the game you’re buying for whatever amount of time they desire, they will do it.
Imagine not being able to play as Trevor in GTA V unless you preordered, or not being able to start the Institute quest in Fallout 4 for 90 days after launch. It would kinda suck if a piece of a game that YOU paid for was locked away because you refused to give early money to a game that you had no way of knowing the quality of.
Maybe this won’t catch on. Maybe it’s just a case of seeing the sky falling. But with the game industry being the business that it is and the shady shit they can do, I kind of have to worry.
And god help us if Konami, Ubisoft, or EA catch wind of this...
