The game’s Variety Map Pack DLC came to Xbox One and PC yesterday, and some players are upset about the price tag.
Though it came out on PS4 late last month thanks to a timed-exclusivity deal, the arrival of four new maps and a handful of loot boxes on both of the other platforms yesterday reminded some players of an uncomfortable truth: Activision is charging $US15 ($20) for the DLC, even though when the exact same maps were released for Xbox 360 and PS3 nine years ago, it only cost a single Hamilton. And for players on PC, the map pack even came free as part of a patch to the game sponsored by NVIDIA.
“Hold on I am confused, aren’t remastered titles usually meant to include the original games content,” wrote ajmurray94 on Reddit, while nonofax asked, “Is this how it is now? Remastered DLC for a remastered game?”
Modern Warfare Remastered still isn’t being sold separately either, so in addition to pricing the map pack at a premium, players who want to run once more through the hellish bullet gauntlets of Broadcast, Chinatown, Creek, and Killhouse can only do so if they first purchase Infinite Warfare. Even as the game’s player base tanks on PC (the active user number is less than a quarter of what it was six months ago), Activision still hasn’t announced whether Modern Warfare Remastered will eventually be available as a standalone game.
The entire affair hasn’t helped the game’s Steam page either, which now has a growing number of protest reviews, many of which read something like the following:
“A near perfect remaster by Raven Software, tarnished by the greed of Activision. The single player is perfect, but the multiplayer has gone downhill since release due to bad business decisions and a nearly non existent player base. Add in the fact that you can only get this game through buying a special edition of Infinite Warfare and you have plenty of reasons to avoid buying it.”
Of course, the map pack released for Modern Warfare 2 was also $US15 ($20), but then again that game didn’t also have micro-transactions.
Comments
12 responses to “Modern Warfare Remastered’s Map Pack Is Even More Expensive Than The Original”
0 fuckin surprise. We are unfortunately going to have to notch this “remaster” up to a loss. It feels nothing like MW1, worse yet it contains all the childish design choices of the newer titles.
It is just wrong.
Sad, but true. I’ve pretty much given up on COD since Ghosts, but I was holding out for a run through the MW remaster when it goes standalone. Zip effing chance of that if it plays like the new ones and multiplayer is already dead.
Wait, so MW:Remastered incorporated new game mechanics? I haven’t played it yet. Wasn’t it just the old game with new graphics and textures like it shoulda been???
Loot crates, new weapons and the new “medal” system.
*GROAN* Oh god… new weapons would imbalance the shit out of it. COD4 was to me the ‘Starcraft’ of the COD games, it was almost perfectly balanced in terms of weaponry. Nice to see they ‘activisioned’ it 🙁
Pretty much every gun had a role, some of the new ones (especially the melee weapons faster attack speeds) give a clear advantage.
I can’t believe how badly Activision messed this up. A remastered COD4 should’ve been a slam dunk and instead they’ve turned it into an own goal
Yeah, the idea of a remastered COD4 in theory is something that’d be an instant buy for me. However the way they released this means I don’t have it and what they have done means even if it was a separate buy, I would not get it.
It really beggars belief because maybe some of these decisions make sense from a console perspective, but for PC they don’t and surely they are actually losing potential revenue.
The only way it makes sense from a console perspective is that in the past they’ve been able to fleece some console players but lately season passes seem to be getting a bad rap (look at the speculation over Battlefront 2, wouldn’t be an issue if their season pass was popular)
Season passes suck because ultimately they are not value for money unless there is a huge player base who all buy it and keep playing. Otherwise whether your purchase was worthwhile greatly depends on other people. Which means if a dev under delivers on a game, player base dies off quickly, the season pass becomes a bigger rip off.
Also this idea of small DLCs which are separate needs to be done away with. It should be DLC all in one bundle or not at all. Seriously, who would by just the third DLC map pack out of four for a game? Yet servers, matchmaking and everything is based on the idea each DLC is seperate, designed as if each has a large separate player base.
What ends up happening is you get a season pass, and essentially get a weekend or a week of the new maps before all you can get is the base game again.
It’s probably like films, a couple decades ago a film would come out and it’s box office was over many months. Now it’s all money making in the short term.
Gamers these days move on more quickly and yet games are built as if people stick around.
God knows why I have the season pass for Battlefront, I barely played the original game but it was on sale. Barely could find matches for the DLC and one of them I never did.
Black ops 3, like the game, some DLCs I only played the first weekend. Just base game and so it’s a waste of money.
Love the Battlefield Franchise. BF3 and BF4 the premium pass was worth it, but it had a large player base and a server browser. Match making sucks for DLC and fragmentation. However games like BF3, now there are only servers of base game, DLC which was half the game is now worthless. Battlefield 1, I have premium, the game died before DLC even came out.
They gave our the BF4 DLC for free on xbone last year and yet you can’t find a match on any of the DLC maps in Australia only on overseas servers! Armed with that knowledge I haven’t bothered with any further map packs. The first Titanfall ended up giving our theirs for free, and I imagine other games will follow suit to keep their player bases intact. The battlefield franchise as a whole would be better if the multiplayer was the base game and the boring-arse campaign was the DLC!
I’m on PC and there’s still BF4 DLC servers thankfully. Not that I’ve played for ages. Eventually it’ll just be the base game. I wish after a set period of time, even a year or so the DLC was all free.