DLC Wars: Tekken Tag 2 Vs Skullgirls

Before we start, let me direct your attention to an old post of mine

http://identitygaming.blogspot.se/2013/08/skullgirls-dlc-is-disgusting.html

If you don't want to read it then it's basically a rant I made about how stupid the Skullgirls palette swap DLC is.  Basically, you have to may money for the artist to use the fucking fill tool in paint, it's stupid.

Anyway, today I was talking to my friend and he brought up an instance of DLC in a fighting game that didn't make me want to kick someone in the head.  If you own a copy of Tekken Tag Tournament 2 then there is a bunch of DLC you can get for that game completely free, including new characters of all fucking things!

I don't own a copy of Tekken Tag 2 (I will do soon though) so I had to go do some googling to find out what the deal is.  Turns out that the producer, Katsuhiro Harada thinks that modern day DLC is a load of horse shit so he's trying to right the ills of the world by providing a load of awesome shit for free.

THIS, people, is a good developer right here.  He's no small fry in Namco Bandai, he's a guy who works as the producer for the fucking Tekken franchise, I'm pretty sure he's under quite a bit of pressure for his games to make some fucking money, probably more so than any indie developer is.  Yet despite this, he's providing all this shit for free, absolutely NO MONEY.  Costumes, characters, multi account usage, stages and god knows what else for £0, $0, ¥0!

Then you turn your head the other way and see Skullgirls charging for the use of the fucking fill tool, it's disgusting.  If you're going to charge people for something, fucking put some goddamn effort into it.  Hell, as long as it wasn't on disc, I'd be willing to pay for a new character or a new stage, some guy somewhere drew that shit, rendered it in 3D, made it work and all that jazz, some credit for the effort is deserved and yet Tekken just GIVES that shit away.  In this day and age of almost every company using DLC to just wring money out of you, this is a breath of fresh air.

Skullgirls looks like a good game, I'm willing to support it, but they can take their palette swap DLC and go shove it up their arse.  Finally, Katsuhiro Harada is a fucking beast and it's a shame that more developers don't follow in his footsteps.  Capcom could learn a thing or two here.....

Skullgirls DLC is Disgusting

Skullgirls is a game I've not played, but looks pretty good and I'll be getting it on Steam once it's released.

Quality of the game aside though, while looking at the Steam store page I found something pretty rage inducing that I would like to share my thoughts on.  A long time ago I made a blog post about how Palette swapped enemies and characters in games are a bunch of lazy bullshit, go read that here.

http://identitygaming.blogspot.se/2012/07/now-thats-some-bullshit-2-palette-swaps.html

Now unless your Mortal Kombat, where your passing off swaps as new characters, doing this in fighting games isn't so bad.  Like in Street Fighter, being able to change Ryu's clothes or Sakura's school uniform from their standard colours to something that you find more appealing or something funky is cool, it lets you personalise your character a bit.

So those features were kind of cool and you liked it right? Well now, at least in Skullgirls, if you want to personalise your character just a tiny bit you have to fucking pay for that shit now.  Something that was a standard feature in pretty much every fighting game I've ever played is now being passed off as fucking DLC.  Also before anyone wants to tell about how cheap it is, I don't give a fuck, no one should have to pay for fucking palette swaps.

I can't remember if it was Persona or Blazblue or whatever but I remember in one of those guys you could pick like a section of clothes or part of the character, and then choose from like 60 odd colours so that you could really make something that you liked.  Sure it's a small thing, but making that a paid add on is fucking arse.

But you know what, I don't blame the developers, I blame the people who buy it.  You can't fault a bunch of people who want to make money on their game, and sure, if people are willing to pay for stuff that has come standard for years, then why not?!  Their the fucking idiots eating it up and telling them it's OK to pull that shit.  What's worse is that I found a community website with this announcement on it and people were fucking loving it!  I couldn't believe it.

Well whatever, I suppose I'm getting overly annoyed about a small thing, but it shouldn't fucking be this way! Goddamnit!  You are being charged for the dev to use the fill tool, think about that.