EA's Peter Moore Explains On-Disc DLC

EA has been having something of a reprieve lately, now that the gaming world's collective hate has been pointed squarely at Konami and the many, many prickish things the corporation has been up to. Say what you want about EA--they might overcharge for stuff, release the same game every year, and fill their games with more microtransactions than a Bacterial Marketplace, but at least they aren't causing employees to commit suicide or taking huge, steaming dumps on beloved franchises.

...Well they haven't done it more than once.

Point is, it's been a good long time since we've had a proper EA roast. But unfortunately, even though this article is about EA's Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore discussing his company's habit of using on-disc DLC this also won't be a roast. Because as it turns out, as reviled as it is, our collective rage might stem from a mere misunderstanding of the concept. Ill let him explain:

"A lot of that resistance comes from the erroneous belief that somehow companies will ship a game incomplete, and then try to sell you stuff they have already made and held back. Nonsense. You come and stand where I am, next to Visceral's studio, and you see the work that is being done right now. And it's not just DLC, this is free updates and ongoing balance changes. Think of them as APIs. Knowing down the road that something needs to sit on what you've already made, means you have to put some foundations down. What people are confused about is they think DLC is secretly on the disc, and that it's somehow unlocked when we say."

So, it's not that they're locking content away behind a wall: it's more like day one DLC that's got some prep work in the actual disc itself to keep the files from being too large, or something. Alright, I can kind of understand that, if you're on a time crunch and you want to add all this stuff, it's better to just get a foundation down than a bunch of half-finished buildings.

But why bother with all that DLC and Season Pass stuff anyway?
 

"Eight years ago when I joined EA, we were publishing 70 games a year. 70. And this year we might do twelve. The big games drive so much engagement nowadays, because they are not games you play for a while and then walk away from. Triple-A games today have live elements to them, and things like season passes are a way of keeping people engaged. Today we've got what used to be the size of a whole game development team, of about 40 or 50 people, working solely on the extra content."

Oh. Well then. I suppose that makes sense.

It might not be enough to dissuade anyone from hating on EA, and I won't tell those peeps they're wrong--after all, they pulled the same thing with SimCity when they said always online was necessary, and that was a bunch of Malarky, so take it with as much salt as you want.