Yay For Dickish Business Practises

And now it's time for the Shitty Ass Gaming Lifetime Achievement Award. This is given to the person, persons, companies, and/or fictional entities who've done the most to ruin the lives of video gamer players over the past calendar year.

 
And there's really only one nominee this year . . . Capcom! For selling retail copies of games with locked content on the disk that was later to be sold as "DLC."[1]

I see your eyes glazing over. Okay, here's what happened. Earlier this year, Capcom released Street Fighter X Tekken. As is often the case these days, consumers were told extra playable characters would be made available -- for a price -- via download later. However some eager beavers exploited a programming glitch and hacked a copy of the retail release. They found all the data for the extra characters already present on the disk, but locked so the data couldn't be used. That left consumers to conclude that the material Capcom was intending to sell as "extra" was in fact the unlock codes for content already in the buyer's possession. Nor is this an isolated incident; I've heard Resident Evil 6 was sold with locked content on the disk.

You remember that scene from Fargo when the bad guy's rooking the nice couple into paying extra for a car because it's got an anti-corrosion sealant the bad guy didn't tell them about when they were agreeing on a price?[2]

When asked about the situation, Capcom explained that releasing the disks with the extra content already on them was a way to make gamers lives easier later; it would cut down on multiplayer technical issues and so on.[3] Consumers aren't buying it. The scandal pissed people off so much they filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau, causing the BBB to downcheck Capcom's rating.[4]

Channel your inner ET -- ooouuuuch.
-BJ

1.  http://www.bigredbarrel.com/2012/03/street-fighter-x-tekkens-dlc-a-far-cry-from-when-everything-on-a-disc-was-yours/
2.  http://youtu.be/E5gwc4UizUc
3.  http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2012/03/capcom-unity-explain-sfxt-dlc/
4.  http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Capcom-SVP-Responds-BBB-Rating-Drop-41410.html