So i’m going through my Gamefly list and being a RPG junkie I was thinking of trying out Dark Messiah of Might and Magic for Xbox 360. I download the demo from Marketplace and notice there is downloadable content up for it already. Looking at it I find it’s just some weapons and accessories for your characters for either 400 or 800 MS points. The thing that set me off about this was the fact the game isn’t even out yet.

I know at this point the whole downloadable content debate has been done to death but this to me is a new low. When DLC was first introduced most gamers concerns were countered by developers and publishers that it would just be to add value, extend the life of games and add content after a game was done and shipped. Then came the dirty secret of small DLC files that did nothing more than unlock content that was already on the discs to begin with.

Now we are getting DLC before the games even ship out to retail. This is just one big slap to the face to gamers. The saddest part to me is people will buy this content giving them an excuse to just keep doing it. This is gamers fears from 2 years ago becoming reality, and if people don’t stop buying this, horse armor and jerseys its only going to get worse.

If you have to spend your points buy an arcade game or an episode of Desperate Housewives, something except supporting this tactic embraced by depraved game publishers. Downloadable content can be a good thing, for example the new Mass Effect mission. We just have to make sure what we download gives a clear message to publishers whats acceptable and what is not.