Representative of Ubisoft said that the company will no longer make their future games require DLCs for full experiences. This statement has been made by Ubisoft’s VP of live operations Anne Blondel-Jouin when talking to GamesIndustry.biz.
Instead, the company is seeking to support their upcoming games in a length of 5 to 10 years, while planning for a deliberate way of monetisation.
“Monetisation is something we have to be very careful about, and my team is in charge of that and making sure we find a right balance.”
Said Blondel-Jouin, she then continued into talking about how compulsory DLCs is bad for the gamer.
“It wouldn’t work if it was about making it compulsory for gamers. No more DLC that you have to buy if you want to have the full experience. You have the game, and if you want to expand it — depending on how you want to experience the game — you’re free to buy it, or not.”
Ubisoft is well known for practising excessive utilization of DLCs and pre-order bonuses. Almost every major game release of the company’s franchises, such as Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs and The Division, usually have a one season pass that contains various DLCs, mostly new missions. Moreover, many of Ubisoft’s games are sold in many pre-order editions, with exclusive content for specific retailers, which caused controversy in recent years.
One such notorious case is when the company released Assassin’s Creed Unity with the pre-order bonus of a pant that allows the character run faster — also due to the launch issues with Unity, Ubisoft game a piece of DLC for free. However, Ubisoft has some successful exceptions such as Rainbow Six: Siege and South Park: The Stick of Truth, games that don’t require the players to buy DLCs in order to have a full experience.
