I've been reading a lot of debate lately, partly in GC and on Xbox forums about gamers being ripped off with downloadable content, writes viewer Emerald Eagle (gamertag).

The complaints are mostly of publishers/developers deliberately holding back sections of games or extras like alternate costumes, etc. so we have to pay more money to play them.

It's plainly obvious when this is done

as most of the time what you're paying for is an unlock code, usually a 108KB one if you're on Xbox Live.

This means the "downloadable" content has already been created and is sitting on the disc with the main game.

Frankly, this is one of the most horrendous abuses a developer/publisher can do to the people that keep them in business.


They charge us high prices for the game itself and then more on top for what should be available already and yet we all still pay up anyway.

This is exactly what a viewer said earlier in the week, it's telling the publishers that this is an acceptable practice and we will pay whatever they want us to pay for the entire game and that we enjoy being fleeced.

It taints the genuine companies out

there who strive to make unique additional content for their games and makes us wary of all of them.

If it's on the disc then it should be accessible from the outset, either available straight away or having them as an unlockable given when certain criteria has been met, (like they do with Achievements), just like the way it was before gaming went online.

If it was there and you wanted it, you

had to work for it.

This practice has to stop and it's up to all of us as gamers to make it stop.

The only way we can get publishers to take notice and treat the people who keep them in business with more respect is to not succumb to their demands and more importantly, not to buy their fake downloadable content.