They've also gone through phases of making DLC for older games like Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1 free to download. Say what you will about Battlefield, but their decision to include map pack DLC within the base game price and stagger it out over the following couple of years was a fan-friendly move. It's a good move by EA, who have been doing their fair share of penance since the whole loot box debacle from a couple of years ago.
Now that both of these things are ceasing to function, the result is that with EA you get a bunch of free stuff, and with Ubisoft you lose access to key features in certain games that you'd really have expected to be unaffected by online technicalities (such as co-op play in Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and even single-player DLC in Assassin's Creed 3). Both publishers had stodgy systems that sought to entrench players deeper into their respective ecosystems - EA's was a pointless currency for Bioware RPGs, Ubisoft's was an online-based DRM and server infrastructure. But instead of doing something bonkers like making that DLC no longer available to play or download (*ahem* Ubisoft), EA has made all DLC - expansions and all - for those games free for everyone.įinally, finally I might get round to playing the unloved but apparently underrated Dragon Age 2 now that I have it with all the 'bits' (because if you can't play the game in 'Ser Isaac Armor' - a mediaeval twist on the Dead Space protagonist's outfit - why play it at all?). EA announced that as of October 1, it would be getting rid of the crappy Bioware Points currency that it used for players to buy DLC for games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, and Dragon Age 2.
I've spent more time than I would have like these past couple of weeks lambasting Ubisoft for their abandonment of online components in some of their games, then their revocation of access to single-player games (before having to amend that latter condemnation the following day after the sneaky sods amended the Steam page to say that in fact the game will still be accessible).Īfter that rollercoaster, it was nice to see another of the big publishers do something fan-friendly in response to shutting down one of its outmoded ecosystems.
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