Last week’s feel-good news that Shadow Of War developer Monolith is commemorating the game’s late executive producer Michael Forgey with a piece of charitable DLC has taken a turn amid concerns of where some of the proceeds are going.
Forgey died of cancer on March 3, and in advance of the release of the new game, Monolith said they’d offer a downloadable character named Forthog Orc-Slayer who would randomly arrive to aid the player in fights against difficult enemies.
The character, based on Forgey, will be purchased for $US4.99 ($6). WB Games stated that for each purchase, a donation of $US3.50 ($4) would be donated to Forgey’s family until December 31st, 2019.
The DLC came under fire as fans noticed a disclaimer alongside the announcement trailer that indicated the $US3.50 ($4) would only be limited to certain purchase locations within the United States. It noted that the offer was valid in the U.S. except in Alabama, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and South Carolina. They wondered where the money from fans in those states or outside of the U.S. would go.
Concerned that WB Games was profiting off DLC purchases in this states and other countries, fans raised vocal concerns on social media. Among the individuals voicing concerns are Jim Sterling and John ‘TotalBiscuit’ Bain.
WB has offered the following response: “Neither WBIE nor Monolith will profit from any sales of the Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC regardless of the territory in which that DLC is sold.”
That hasn’t been enough for some, since the statement still doesn’t say what happens to the money spent by people in excluded states and countries. Regardless, that appears to be WB’s script and they’re sticking to it:
We’ve also inquired about this with WB and, will update if they’re able to close the loop on this.
Comments
20 responses to “Fine Print Raises Questions About Shadow Of War Memorial DLC”
Suuuuuure you wont WB…
Amazing how it took Kotaku US and other sites upto 5 days to print do an article on this, when youtubers and the general public noticed it the moment it was announced
Yeah, I’m disappointed how long this took. It should have been a same-day update of the original article.
Wait, what’s the issue here? The DLC costs 6 bucks and 4 goes to charity.
WB says they’re not profiting from the DLC, but they still have to pay infrastructure (data, server etc) costs and salaries…
They never said they would absorb production and ongoing costs
The issue is that it’s stated that the donations will be made, if the DLC is purchased on certain states in the US.
They will not say what happens to the money when the DLC is purchased in the states or countries not listed.
from the article alone it’s not going to charity and WB’s intent isn’t very clear
$3.50 ($4) is going to the family if the person buying it within USA. if you’re not from the USA or are but in Alabama, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and South Carolina where does the money go?
I imagine If they are using those states and those outside of the USA to offset production costs then it should be communicated which right now isn’t
Those states are excluded because of laws relating to raising charity money that goes directly to a family instead of through an authorised charity. There’s no reason they couldn’t have done a dollar-match thing though, where out of every $5 DLC sold, WB themselves donates to the family directly.
That’s exactly it, they could’ve just done something like that (or even donated international proceeds to a charity organisation which is legal) but they haven’t announced anything at all in regards to money from outside those 44 states so it’s a little shady to say the least.
I guess there’s no easy PR way to say “If you buy the DLC in Alabama, you will be paying for overheads in making the DLC, which will allow $3.50 from someone in another state to go to Forgey’s family instead of the $3.35 which would have gone to his family if sales in those other states had to pay their full share of the overheads.”
Basically, Australians pay $6 for the DLC with no guarantee any of it is donated.
A lot of issues… refer to Totalbiscuit and Jim Sterling. But essentially to honor a fallen collegue WB turned him into DLC (the most henious of content) to be sold off piece meal where most of the sales wont go to charity due to state or international laws that WB are too lazy to pursue. On further analysis and clarification it gets dodgier that 30% goes to retailers.
Better model would be to dollar match all purchases to a charity fund. (Blizzard does this for charity pets)
Or better still just add him to the game for free, make it an awareness campaign and stop being a cheap ass and make a huge cash donation from the marketing budget.
They are making consumers pay for their charity and looking misery bad guys due to poor structure bying using DLC… rather than being chariatable themselves and getting recognised for being good guys.
Yeah, because it really costs the company $2 per download of a character DLC…
Sorry, but if they’re doing this as a charity/good publicity thing, it certainly looks like they’re trying to make some extra cash on the side.
Hot Tip:
If you are concerned where your dollars are heading, don’t buy the DLC.
Seems an awful lot for a skin though…
You think that these companies would see how crippling microtrans and dlc are to games – the creators of titanfall did and look how well recieved #2 was
Just a few points, the DLC is for a Mysterious Stranger style NPC that helps you when you stuff up something, and Titanfall 2 was well received, but got seriously shafted by the publisher releasing between two FPS juggernauts and so because the money isn’t flowing from it, the publisher is less likely to pay attention to just critical reception.
Let this be a warning to all WB Ganes employees, dont die while on a games project, or they will turn you into overpriced poorly rated DLC
The whole DLC model for this game is utterly disgusting. Even this feels like a cynical ploy by WB to use a personal tragedy to convince people to buy more of their nickel-and-diming random lootbox crap. After all, they’re a slippery slope and the biggest part is breaking people’s resistance to buying the first one.
Its like they want the damn series to fail so they can close monolith or something,. Think about, theres all crap that has happened since e3 with the mircotransions, doing deals with food compaines so give currency for said mircotransactions and now this and then there was the no negative reviews allowed for the first game (though WB says that was the fualt of the pr company they hired)
Yeah it’s disappointing. I loved the first game and was so excited about this one but everything they’re doing with microtransactions and DLC just makes me want to avoid it 🙁
People complain about Activision, EA, Bethesda etc. but WB absolutely take the cake as the worst publisher by a long shot.
Ever since Arrham Knight on PC, WB seems like its trying to out scumbag every other publisher