Nintendo Okie

Well, it has already started to happen.  The wheels are already starting to fall off the DLC machine.  I tried to play Marvel Ultimate Alliance (Xbox 360) online with a friend earlier this week and due to a DLC pack that was no longer available, our session was denied.  This is the exact reason I don’t trust DLC.  I have been sporting my “The End Is Nigh” sign for a while now, but the Doomsday Clock just got closer to midnight.

Back in April of 2007, Activision released a content pack that would add new heroes and villains to Raven Software’s coop brawler, Marvel Ultimate Alliance.  For whatever programming reason, once you downloaded these extra characters, playing with people without the download required them to install a free patch.  The patch repaired whatever was needed in the code and everyone could play online together, with and without extra characters alike.

Fast forward to December 2009 and Activision removes these downloadable characters from the Xbox Live Service.  Along with the character packs, the free patch was removed as well.  This means, anyone that already has the characters cannot play with a new player that doesn’t have the patch.  So as I mentioned, my friend and I cannot play MUA together online.  Let me rephrase that so I get my point across.  I cannot play a four year old game with my friend because I paid for a game add on that is no longer supported.

I made attempts to move my DLC to my memory card instead of my hard drive to see if I could disable it.  It didn’t work.  I considered deleting the pack so we could play together but I was unsure if I could re-download it again when I wanted.  I realize that it should show up in the download history for my Gamertag, but I am not so sure that the content hasn’t been removed from the server completely.  This means I might delete something I paid for and never get it back.  The only way I can find that my friend and I might get to play MUA together is for her to get a different copy of the game with the DLC on the disk.  Even then, I am not so sure it would work.  As I said, I don’t understand the programming that is going on behind the scenes.

Here is the “punch line.”  This game is not even four years old yet and online play is broken due to a DLC pack.  What is going to happen ten years from now?  Which games will I not be able to play then?  I’m not just talking about online, I’m talking playing a game altogether.  This era of online patches and DRMs are starting to ruin the very medium they are working for.  The servers on the other end of your internet cable aren’t going to last forever.  Sooner or later, they are going to shut down.  Then where will we be?  Microsoft just recently ended support for Xbox games.  I can’t play my copy of Phantasy Star Online: Episode I & II anymore.  Perhaps there is some way to trick the game to think it is connecting to the Live servers, but that (if possible mind you) requires a level of programming that I don’t posses.  So for all intents and purposes, that game disk might as well be a coaster.

I love getting new content for the games I already enjoy.  I think it is awesome for companies to make more money off their products that can be used to make bigger and better games.  I even understand some sort of anti-piracy steps have to be taken for companies to turn a profit.  But under no circumstances should any of these things render a game unplayable.  I buy games because I want to keep them around for whenever I wish to play them.  If I only wanted to play games for a week at a time, I would open a Gamefly account and never buy anything.

More than anything, I want to preserve our gaming medium for the future.  We are seriously going to have to fix these DLC/DRM problems fast so we don’t lose a decade or so of our history.  Imagine a world where you check out Moby-Dick from the library and the first page says, “Due to legal reasons, the following content has been permanently removed.”