Originally posted on my old blog on September 24th, 2016.

This afternoon I decided that I wanted to play a game that I had not played for a while. I put the disc in,

UPDATE NEEDED.

To any modern gamer, this is to be expected really, but it is always galling when you do not have particularly long to play. These updates are mandatory, usually meaning that you can no longer play the game until you accept the update.

So you do. You scroll through the legal mumbo jumbo, if there is any, not reading but saying that you have. What? Are you seriously telling me that you read the whole thing? Uh-huh, I believe you.

You click update, and off it goes. So what to do now? I know, there is some DLC available for this particular game, why don’t I have a look at that?

What is DLC? Downloadable Content, or DirectLy Cash-charging you for something that should have been in the original game, depending on your viewpoint.

To be fair in some cases the DLC has really added a new story, characters and fun increasing the scope of the original game, sometimes though it is just a way of squeezing some more money out of people who will buy anything with their favourite game’s name on.

I’m looking at you Call of Doody.

So, I go looking for the DLC, what’s it called? I will just look at the game console store, that it will help narrow it dow…

I then stare open-mouthed as a list of available DLC stretches off the screen and scrolls towards infinity. The first thing that I have seen that is longer than the legal agreement.

How is my update doing? 23%. Argh!

I will look at DLC just for the game that I am playing that should narrow it down.

None exists.

Do not talk rubbish console, I know that it does, as I have played one of them already!

Go out of the store and back in again.

Oh, sorry. You mean that DLC, how foolish of me.

Console, you are starting to make me think that you are enjoying this.

“Gaming will be better with an always on connection”, do you remember when they told us that? I do. It was largely a lie.

Better for the publishers as it makes theft of games harder, and as someone who has hard work stolen I do have a bit of sympathy for that problem. When the solution means that the end user has more problems to deal with though, you are somewhat relying on that end user having some staying power.

Can you see someone who wanted to watch Emmerdale first sitting through 45 minutes of updates and legal screens? We gamers do though don’t we? We put up with it. Games are now an industry that makes more money than Hollywood, (The Californian one, not the perma-tanned baboon from Bake off.) yet it still treats us like it is being run out of someone’s bedroom a lot of the time.

I was around at the start of gaming, and whilst I am not going to sit here and say that older games were better or anything like that, do you remember those days when you could buy a game, bring it home in your sweaty little mitt, load it up (after 5 – 10 minutes when it was tape based) and play?

No updates, no DLC. You wanted extra content you paid for the next version of the game.

Hmm, maybe things are better now?

All I ask is that updates become optional, allowing you to play in that little bit of time you have and then downloading it after you have finished so it is all shiny and new the next time that you play it. Is that not a good idea?

This is not only a console thing by the way, before any PC gamers start. I am a computer gamer too, I have seen how often Steam just does not work so just pop yourself carefully down off your high horse there.

My update is downloaded now, that’s good news. Oh now it is downloading the DLC that I have bought, 2%?

Argh!

I am starting a crossword, they do not ever need updates. Not right now though, I am two down.

(Fallout 4 – Nukaworld if you are interested.)