Space Marine

[Ghanj Rho]

Is anyone here going to get the new Space Marine game that's coming out in September?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Yes. I am, however, extraordinarily peeved at their behavior with regards to pre-order/retailer bonus content. I've already purchased Space Marine, but I'm strongly considering making it my last THQ purchase.

[Darksider]

for those who haven't kept up with the news, exactly what is THQ doing in regards to pre-order content that's got you so pissed?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

There is a rather large amount of content which is retailer-, version-, and pre-order-exclusive. This goes beyond the typical "+0.00000001% fire resist ring!!" bonus crap.

They have entire Chapter/Traitor Legion packs and a small armory of weapons tied up in specific pre-orders, and for legal reasons that often means those things won't be later available as DLCs. THQ has the further chutzpah to offer bonus content with their regular version of the pre-order, but not for pre-ordering the Collector's Edition.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Bitch alot. The DoWII: Retribution CE owners bitched about the wargear DLC being available on Steam and got it yanked until March 1. They're outrage was over the fact that it was released on release day and everyone could get it. They believed only the CE preorders would get all the DLC for some time, based only on the fact the a dev said that it probably would be the cheapest way to get all the DLC and that they didn't know when it'd be made available for all to purchase. Mind you this was over single player items in the game! Topping it all of they got the overpriced Dark Angels DLC skinpack for free.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

What does that have to do with Space Marine and retailer-specific content?

[Feil]

What legal reasons would prevent them from releasing things as DLC?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Well, I hope I'm wrong, but that's usually how these things go - they sign a deal with GameStop or Walmart or Amazon or whatever that says they offer this particular promotional content exclusively.

[Lonestar]

But dude! Steam's pre-order has Blud Rehvans skins!

[evilsoup]

Probably will buy this game, might even break my habits and buy it new ...

...
...nah.

Anywho, if you look here (about 4:13), you can see a brief over-the-shoulder view as a guardsman. It looks a lot like a controlling view - maybe there's a tutorial level where you play as a guard conscript?

[Norade]

Well, I hope I'm wrong, but that's usually how these things go - they sign a deal with GameStop or Walmart or Amazon or whatever that says they offer this particular promotional content exclusively.

So you're raging at THQ for doing what most companies do as well, it's not even a larger scale really...

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

No, because when most companies do it, it's some stupid +0.000001% resist fire ring (as I alluded to earlier) that no one could ever possibly care about. It's just a silly knick-knack that gives your character some little nigh-insignificant leg up in the beginning of the game.

The Space Marine retailer items, by contrast, are actual content: Improved versions of existing weapons (this being a game about using 40k's arsenal of weaponry in the hands of a Space Marine, weapons are rather significant to the gameplay), iconic weapons which aren't in the game normally (can you imagine a Star Wars game where the only way to get a lightsaber is by ordering from Best Buy?), Traitor Legion packs (not as big of a deal, but still irksome), and so on.

Whether other companies do it or not is irrelevant anyway, it's still shit, especially when the collector's edition actually offers less content than the regular edition (what's the point of paying double price for less of a game?).

[Stark]

Are you comparing MMO preorders to shooters? Because shooter bonuses are often new guns, some shooters have guns that you can't get any other way (until they become DLC anyway, paranoia aside), month-one DLC is common fodder for pre-orders, and if we're talking cosmetics the list is pretty significant.

Should anyone be cross only some people can use M1s in Bad Company? As the AU example, preorders get you gold 'exclusive relic' bolter & chainsword, which I seriously doubt will have any ingame significance. Do you have any actual evidence the serious content (like chapter packs etc) won't be DLC later?

[DPDarkPrimus]

I don't know where you're getting your information from, Gaius. Pre-order DLC being exclusive forever is not a universal thing, it's very much a game-by-game basis. LA Noire's pre-order DLC is all available for purchase now, and the game hit just a few weeks ago.

[Stark]

There is the recent example of Brink, which went mad with pre-order diversity and I don't believe that's unlockable through DLC yet. I mean, you can just hack your game, but you can't get it legit. Further back, Borderlands had the pre-order gun pack that never became DLC (largely because it was pretty useless).

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Ok, looking through the pre-order stuff again, I realize I probably misinterpreted how they were doling out all the odds and ends. My bad. Upon rethinking it, packaging it as DLC seems likelier. A few of THQ's recent moves probably colored my initial impression.

(and as an aside, isn't the M1 in BC just from having registered other Battlefield games?)

[Stark]

Yeah, it's the 'register online and have a lot of games' bonus for BC2, and it's pretty much just an unscopable M14. I'd be surprised if a gold relic chainsword had more stat differentiation, though.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Oh, I don't doubt that the "gold" bolter/chainsword are probably pretty insignificant by themselves. I just don't care much for the underlying practice, I guess.

[Wing Commander MAD]

What does that have to do with Space Marine and retailer-specific content?

The race wargear packs for Retribution were retailer specific preorder content, that would "probably" be made available as DLC later on. IIRC Nids were unique to THQ's store, Ork's to Steam, and others like SM, Eldar, etc. were available to all preorder venues. In NA THQ eStore was the only option for getting the Collectors Edition, while in Europe there were different retailers with the collectors edition, and it was superior to the NA CE to boot. One of the devs when asked about it said that getting the CE from THQ's store would likely be the cheapest means of getting all the wargear packs and not having to wait some inderterminate amount of time. Turns out he was wrong, and the packs were available from Steam on release day (at least for a few hours). Further it turns out that the pricing for the packs was such that those of us who didn't get the CE and decided to wait to get the DLC ended getting it cheaper than the CE owners did. The CE was $10 more plus shipping ($5-6) for all the DLC and some crappy postcards with the post match race artwork, whereas the all the DLC wargear packs on steam combined sold for about $10. Cue massive bitching about that, from fans who decided to take a gamble and get the CE thinking they would be special for some months. THQ capitulates and we are told CE owners will get a speciall bonus in the future.

A bit later we get the Dark Angels DLC anounced whith an unstated price. I and others accurately predicted that this would be the "gift" to the CE owners and that the price would just so happen to be the $10 difference between basic Retribution and Retribution CE. Some point before release they reveal a potential price of $10 and release feelers into the communities to see the reaction. The reaction was generally negative, many feeling that $10 about 1/4 of the cost of retribution was not justifiable given the rather lackluster content of the DA skin pack. Further compounding this was the fear, justified it seems, that such DLC would lead to official modding tools (potentially promised in the past post Chaos Rising I believe) not being released. The fact that modders sucha Shuma created impressive mods (most notably the Death Korp of Kreig skin pack for IG which was multiplayer compatible) using only unofficial homebrew modding tools didn't help. Relic releasing the modding tools would likely allow mod makers to do what relic could and thus render their new skin pack DLC scheme moot. Personally, I doubt there really was any kind of chance of the DLC price being changed as it seemed to be earmarked for the "gift" from before it was even created. End result we ended up with a poorly priced skinpack setting bad precedent for future DLC, as a result of people whining to THQ.

Note: It appears that the skin pack is now down to $7.50, which is still overpriced considering that it largly added cloaks to marine models with a few new textures. No brand new models, or voicework. It also isn't recolorable in the army painter, though that is probably due to GW dickery.

TLDR version: THQ has listened to complaints/bitching regarding retailer specific content before. Granted, it was more to do with retailer specific content exclusivity not being maintained. Heck, the orginal retailer specific content for DoWII was patched into the game for free at a later date (v1.4 I believe).

[Wing Commander MAD]

Edit to above post: The $7.50 price for the skin pack may be tied to a D2D sale, or more likely Steam trying to match it. Apparently the they have 15% off this weekend, that when buy it, it gives you a retail code to enter into steam. Don't know, but the point still stands regarding the price to content ratio.

[DPDarkPrimus]

There is the recent example of Brink, which went mad with pre-order diversity and I don't believe that's unlockable through DLC yet. I mean, you can just hack your game, but you can't get it legit. Further back, Borderlands had the pre-order gun pack that never became DLC (largely because it was pretty useless).

The close are mere cosmetic differences, like the multiplayer skins for Space Marine. Any weapons or mods that were pre-order exclusive for Brink are statistically identical to normally available items in-game, just with a unique model.

[Stark]

No shit? Just like a 'gold relic' chainsword. But if you're dumb enough to play Brink, want the Doom content and didn't buy from Gamespot, you miss out. BCG is talking about preorder stuff that never becomes available to all.

Ps what close are merely cosmetic differences?

BCG, are there any recent examples of how THQ specifically handles this sort of thing? All I can think of is Metro, where the pre-order shotgun was a part of the later released DLC.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

MAD brought up Retribution, although that was a little different (it was less retailer-exclusive and, IIRC, they were more explicit about its DLC availability). Vanilla DoW2 also had some sort of bonus content somewhere, but I don't remember what it was or how it worked.

[Block]

MAD brought up Retribution, although that was a little different (it was less retailer-exclusive and, IIRC, they were more explicit about its DLC availability). Vanilla DoW2 also had some sort of bonus content somewhere, but I don't remember what it was or how it worked.

There were sposed to be unique skins for MP, but they never worked right.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Ps what close are merely cosmetic differences?

I meant to type "clothes". A error due to tiredness.