All that wailing counts for naught, though, because as far as Call of Duty is concerned, many of you went out and bought the damn packs anyway.
Activision revealed today that it’s sold 18 million map packs for Call of Duty Black Ops. At $US15 a pop, that’s a lot of easy money for the publisher, so much so that as Gamasutra points out it means the average Black Ops player has spent $US76 on the game since first picking it up.
OK, so maybe you didn’t go out and buy them. Maybe your boss did, or your bro, or your bro’s bro. Still. You want publishers to stop stumping you for a few maps, don’t write angry messages anonymously on internet forums. Go tell your bro’s bro’s boss to stop buying map packs!
Activision Blizzard Reports Digital Sales Growth, 18M Black Ops Map Pack Sales [Gamasutra]
Darren
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:20 PMWith the amount of time the average COD player spend playing the game, the map packs aren’t necessarily overpriced. I’ve got friends that play up to four or five nights a week for the entire year. So $20 or so every few months isn’t a huge investment.
Riavan
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:09 PMYeah, but it’s overpriced because before this whole crappy system, it was free and there was usually more than 4 maps per pack.
ford1001
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 11:11 PMThere is actually 5 maps
vinny
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:30 PMHonestly, why do people buy this crap?
SOX
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:33 PMTo add more content to games they enjoy playing.
Exaemo
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:40 PMWhy do people smoke?
Nitro
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:55 PMIt makes me look cool.
Dain Bramage
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:03 PMto make nitro look cool
Adam
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:53 PMAnd then BF3 stumps MW3 with mod support.
Neil Williams
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:36 PMYou might want to look into that a little further, good sir.
Adam
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 8:04 PMIt’ll take a while. I know they won’t support it now. They should put it in later into the future.
dingus
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 8:46 PMthey won’t, bad luck old man.
weresmurf
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 10:50 PMWont OFFICIALLY support mods. Sheesh. You can still mod it, it’ll just be harder.
Awnshegh
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:56 PMI played BOps. I really enjoyed BOps. I did not buy a single map pack.
But then I played Bad Company 2. I loved Bad Company 2 so I grabbed Onslaught and Vietnam. Though I got them both on special.
Riavan
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:10 PMIn fairness, Vietnam had new vehicles, guns, character models and sounds on top of the maps, not exaclty as poor value as a cod map pack, which is usually just 4 new maps.
Spuddy
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 7:51 PMThere were 8 map packs for Bad Company 2 and 7 were free.
Jake
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 5:56 PMMap Packs should be free. See TF2.
Ry34
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:02 PM+1
Fenixius
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:21 PMI have spent plenty of money on TF2… Way more than I have on any other game post-release excluding MMO subscriptions.
alinos
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:48 PMSee CoD 4 on PC.
Nvidia and maybe ATI i believe both paid for the map packs and all that happened was that they got a nice little Brought to you by Nvidia logo in the corner.
and Best of all since they were free to everyone and included in patches no segregation
Ben
Saturday, September 3, 2011 at 3:36 AMHats
mchaza
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:28 PMthat some easy 180 or so million dollars profit right there since they were most likely all made before the game shipped. The same case will be for MW3 and the same with heaps of games.
Like Mega64 why dont they cut to the case and release DLC: The game already.
Milbo
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 6:31 PMI just hate the way they divide the player pool. I was loving ‘War For Cybertron’ multiplayer, but when the map pack got released, which I refused to buy, I couldn’t find a damn match anymore! It kept kicking me out of lobbies – which basically killed the game for me.
Similarly, I got a few of the Black Ops maps, but always ended up deleting them because I got sick of playing the same people over and over. Also the map pack players tend to be a bit better than the general pool. Sometimes you just wanna play noobs and go 30-0.
Sam
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 7:27 PMi know they milk us, but if you get a year’s worth of fun out of a $80 game, and spend a bit more to get a fresh set of playspaces, then I think they’ve earned their money for that.
Cooper
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 7:57 PMThe porblem is that you shouldn’t have to pay any extra because it probably only took them a couple of days to whip up that crap
Reign
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 8:08 PMAlthough you may argue with their morals, you can’t argue with $270,000,000.
Neo-Kaiser
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 9:02 PMI go by how often I play the game. I play Halo all the time, so I bought the map packs for those games. I rarely play CoD, so I never really buy the maps, even on special.
Reoh
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 9:12 PMYeah the value that way isn’t so bad.
But 100′s of free community maps was way more, and while they weren’t always as good there was at least as many that were and they were still free.
I like what valve did with the map stamps to support community mappers.
Steven Bogos
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 9:26 PMI don’t want to live on this planet anymore :(
Pakka
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 9:36 PMYeah they’re overpriced – but at the same time, they may not be much value to someone like Luke Plunkett (what pleases him anyway?) but it could be money well spent for another who may get hours upon hours worth of time playing them?!
Each to their own, respect that!
McGarnical
Friday, September 2, 2011 at 10:34 PMAs the article says, wail and gnash your teeth as much as you want and say things like “they should be free”, but the fact is people are buying them. Everything is worth what people are prepared to pay for it. They’re selling well, therefore they’re not overpriced.
Cav Clayton
Saturday, September 3, 2011 at 12:15 AMOxygen is something I use (quite often I might add), so I don’t mind spending $20 a month for it.
Whatever happened to expansions dammit! I’ll take a Shivering Isles over 4-5 map packs any day.
AerintheADEQUATE
Saturday, September 3, 2011 at 12:30 AMThe last map-pack I bought was for World at War… my dad and I used to play online together when I lived in Maryland. It was fun.
He’s a much bigger CoD fan than I am… which admittedly isn’t saying much, I play the campaigns and usually then I’m done… but I don’t think he even has the two most recent games because he saw MW2 in the store and said “… so what’s different?” :-P
I was so proud in that one moment.
Gavin
Saturday, September 3, 2011 at 1:57 AMCall of Duty lost me post World at War, and I am so glad it did.
Cypher
Saturday, September 3, 2011 at 2:27 AMI buy a game, thats all I’m spending on it, besides the hours it takes to complete of course. DLC is a fucking ripoff for any game as far as I’m concerned once you buy it. If I pay the money and its on the disc, it’s my property. I’m not paying again for something I already bought, and this kind of shit falls right into that category. People are stupid and will continue to buy the shit though so it’ll never change.
Steve
Saturday, September 3, 2011 at 2:57 AMPeople should vote with their goddamn wallets and show a bit of taste. If you keep paying money for these map-packs, they’ll keep charging for them, with a smile on their faces.
Map packs should be free like most other games that don’t wind up causing fragmentation within their userbase and forcing players to constantly fork out to stay up to date.
DENAz
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 12:31 PMWhich is why i no longer play COD online or buy any DLC. I used to love COD, but these days I just don’t feel the urge to buy the map packs. Where as Battlefield will have me buying them instantly
Brandon
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 3:07 PMThe only reason I play black ops is for zombies. This of course means I’m one of the bro’s buying the DLC (only got 2 so far but will get them all) and ruining it for everyone else. Worst part about it is I literally play 1 map out of the whole pack. Prob seems stupid but I really love Zombies modes. Haven’t even touch regular single player or multi just zombies all the way
xenoonex
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 4:31 PMsave money get Zombie Panic: source
Aaron
Tuesday, September 6, 2011 at 9:43 AMClearly people believe map packs and other add ons enrich the game for them so they’re going to buy them. I’ve got all the Halo map packs that have ever been released and played the hell out of them and felt like i got value for money.
I’d be more interested in getting figures for content packs like Mass Effect and Red Dead Redemption that don’t expand multiplayer to see how many people get those. I know I’ve DLed content packs I haven’t even got round to using yet. They’re the invisible additions to my ‘to play’ pile.
heisenburg
Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 8:49 AM“Map packs should be free like most other games that don’t wind up causing fragmentation within their userbase and forcing players to constantly fork out to stay up to date.”
couldn’t agree more