Interesting:
A Season Pass must include at least one released DLC when it is made available for purchase*
.*with the exception of Season Passes included in a Pre-Purchase of a deluxe edition.[…]
You may include a Season Pass as part of a game’s pre-purchase. […]
When a Season Pass DLC is in pre-purchase mode, you are not required to release at least one DLC in the Season Pass at the time it goes on sale (as you are usually required to do when you launch a Season Pass). However, when the game launches, you will need to release the Season Pass out of pre-purchase–this will entail releasing at least one of the DLCs included in the Season Pass.
My reading of this is that deluxe/gold/ultimate editions will need to include some “day one” DLC content. Many of them already do but publishers are now further incentivised to include something small like a bonus skin if they want to sell the season pass before its major content is ready.
This seems reasonable, if you are selling something the expectation should be that something is actually available when it’s not labeled as a preorder.
Do devs need dlc when releasing a season pass or when the game drops.?If a company is releasing day 1 dlc with a season pass because “we have to” it’s a dev choice as day 1 dlc is. I think it’s more or less so devs can’t put up a season pass at launch and wait 8 months to drop 1 thing people paid for almost a year ago
I think that is already a requirement? As a dev I hated that we had to make what is essentially a day one DLC, which isn’t a good look. ”Look, they lock content behind DLC, which they already have, it cost them nothing”. Players extrapolate from that to other content we release later, content we actually haven’t even designed yet. Ugh.
Well, making a season pass is crap too, but there was no way to talk the publishing department out of that.
I reject the presupposition that season passes can ever be “proper.” What’s “proper” is buying a game once, receiving a game that’s finished and complete, and owning the whole thing forever.
A game can both be complete and have expansions later. While it is true that many games strip what seems like core content off the main purchase to sell it separately as DLC, there are many examples of DLCs expanding upon an already finished game.
