EA thinks you love their DLC, bro.

“The document dictates plans to introduce a yearly subscription service that would tie into all EA Sports titles. For a yearly price--the cost is currently being bandied somewhere between $14.99 and $34.99--users will gain access to a number of exclusive offerings, including: 

• Discounts on DLC

• Exclusive DLC

• An in-game and website-based "Digital Badge"

• Ability to transfer paid content from older titles to newer titles

• Early downloadable access to new feature titles”

Remember how I was bitching like a week or two ago about that EA Sports Tiger Woods '12 game that released with even more DLC courses than shipped with the retail copy? What really pissed me off was that it had more DLC courses than shipped courses, AND all the DLC was released on the same day as the retail game. Rather than paying like $4 per course, you'd probably like to just pay their recurring subscription fee instead, right? LOL! Remember how I said it was all going to come to this? Games like Call of Duty would end up being subscription-based like WoW because of Activision, etc.? Then it was later confirmed that this was indeed planned for the CoD series, but Activision would be making a move to it in phases... oh, predictable. The gaming industry has been inching closer and closer ever since if you've been paying attention. Like, now you have to pay an additional "online service" fee if you buy a game used to get online and full content. Well, this DLC subscription is completely independent of that obviously. EA also has been restricting access to games for things like forum bans given for colorful criticisms. Man, I really want to do that big DRM/Copyright Trolls post. Since my bitching starting almost three years ago, EA has gone out on a few dates with Activision and started to hold hands in a capitaleeching crusade to suck every dollar possible from you. And you're going to keep paying them, too. Even after they blatantly lie to your face. Dragon Age II? Nah, there's no DRM in there, dude. Oh, wait... you actually looked? It was totally an accident! It's not like all these companies have been going through extreme measures to impose restrictions while simultaneously buttfucking the money right out of your back pocket and spitting in your face at an exponential rate these past few years. LoL~! Assholes. Hey, wasn't all this in-game advertising and stuff supposed to lead to reduced fees and things? Something like that.

Everyone give a big thanks to EA and Activision for rapidly killing the hacking gaming scene. Special shouts to BOBBY KOTICK. Great idea, Blizzard. Real smooth.

Anyway, I'll be away wrapping up my second play-through of Mass Effect 2 before the triquel gets here. My GameFly parcel containing Dead Space 2 should also arrive tomorrow. Time to cool off from all that Call of Duty, right?

All this shit makes me have a full-on Dork_Rage- so hard, bros. It should make you feel the same way. Seriously. Just step back and look at it - even excluding all the anti-piracy crusade/copyright infringement bullshit that I still want to do like a 12-part rage-post on. People always say the same thing, "This will never happen. No way. People will boycott." Have they? Because it has already started. IN PHASES. Obviously they aren't going to drop all this at once. They will nudge you into it with distractions of pancakes and cotton candy (actually, you don't even get that or anything metaphorical to that). You don't get full games when you buy them used now. You will soon have to start paying recurring subscriptions for "bonus/extra content" that most-of-the-time ships the same day. Activision will start to break their games up into subscription packages sooner than you think.

EA's new ad-guy broheim, Dave Madden, has the right idea. Take DLC no one really wants anyway, take all the in-game advertisements no one really wants anyway, combine the two and release them for free. Let the advertising clients sponsor the shitty DLCs. Great idea. Oh wait, isn't this where we were like three years ago or so before the shit-flinging really got out of hand? Full on that: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/34281/Opinion_InGame_Advertisings_Big_New_Play.php

It may seem like a long time away, but just think about how much gaming has changed in the past decade? That's around the time Diablo II released. Soon everything will be subscription and stream. Until then, you'll just have to keep dealing with rushed, incomplete, butchered games delivered to you in pieces because they will keep chopping them up as much as possible to get as many different instances of a payment as possible. And you'll keep paying for it. I shouldn't have to explain how this will eventually become mainstream and continue to be a snowballing pile of shit until the industry hits a breaking point. Again, I will just cite the Network Effect. LoL~!