If you’ve ever visited Train Simulator’s page on Steam, you may have noticed something surprising about the game: somehow, it has thousands of dollars worth of DLC.
The exact value of the DLC fluctuates, depending on what DLC is on sale — but as of this writing, Train Simulator 2014, which launched yesterday on Steam, has DLC that totals this much money:
$US2837.69 — nearly three thousand dollars — for what seems to be mostly extra types of locomotives and routes that you can purchase. Sure, there are other games in which you could spend this much money on — typically, free-to-play games — it’s just not the sort of money you’d expect to be able to spend on a train simulator game, of all things.
It’s worth noting that much of the DLC for Train Simulator 2014 seems to be legacy DLC — that is, it’s the same DLC that was on Train Simulator 2013. That would explain why Train Simulator 2014 could have so much DLC so soon after release.
When asked about the DLC, Rail Simulator — the people behind the game — issued the following statement to Kotaku:
We are very proud of the breadth and depth of DLC we offer to customers, but we don’t expect people to buy everything we make. We give players the opportunity to customise their digital collection in a way that best suits their interests. For example, we know that some of our players will only collect ultra-modern high speed trains from around the world, others will want to specialise in American diesel locomotives, while some specialise in heritage steam engines. And so on. Our comprehensive range allows players to pick and choose the locomotives and routes they are most passionate about. We make it very clear that buying all our DLC is not essential to enjoy the game and that players do not receive a competitive advantage from owning it all.
I’m curious though: have you ever spent this much money on a game? Would you?
Comments
7 responses to “You’ll Need More Than $2000 To Buy All Of This Game’s DLC”
Okay… On Train Simulator? Absolutely not.
On Rock Band, however, I’ve bought 500 songs, and considering they’re $1 or $2 a piece, that’s aalmost a thousand dollars there. Think about those who’ve bought all 4,000 songs or so…
And this is what is wrong with the game industry, and I thought EA and Capcom were bad at milking customers with micro-transactions.
I really don’t see an issue with this sort of pricing in (what I imagine) is a reasonably niche market.
A dollar or two per DLC probably wouldn’t cover costs of development at the quantity they’re selling. Better that they make these things available to a niche audience at this price than not at all.
This is NOT indicative of any problem with the games industry.
I’m a trainspotter myself and avid railway simmer. Train Simulator is currently my goto game.
The base game comes with a great amount of content. Locomotives, routes, rolling stock, scenarios.
The amount of detail which goes into each piece of DLC equates to many many hours of work by the dev team. I don’t know if you’ve dealt with many railway simmers, but the expectation for detail and accuracy is insane.
Additionally, this is not a new game. Every year their do a revamp of the base game, and everyone who has the current version automatically gets updated to the latest version. I’ve owned the game since it was called “RailWorks” which was in 2009. Every year since then it has received an update and a name change.
Yes, almost $3000 worth of DLC is a lot. But considering the nature of the game and it’s fans, people purchase the content which appeals to them most. It is also 4 years worth of DLC. Not launch DLC.
Now, if only Rockstar allowed you to control the freight trains, I’d get all this for free!
It’s a shame. It’s actually a decent simulator, but they charge absolutely ridiculous amounts for new locomotives or routes. The actual value of those things is closer to $2 a loco and $10 a route.
It’s the same thing with modern flight sims. I think DCS is charging something like $30-$40 per aircraft dlc. It’s definitely an attitude towards sim customers…
*EDIT* Just checked the prices on Steam, my earlier estimate was conservative. It’s between $40-$50 for new aircraft, the latest releases, the UH-1H and Mi-8MTV are $50 each.
now it cost 4000$ !!!!!!!!