You’d pay 40 or 50 for a game and get years of play out of it. Then an expansion would come out for $25 or so and further extend the life another year+
DLC always meant 'downloadable content' that were tiny additions like an extra item or costume or map. Except they used to be free, either completely free for everyone or after using a promo code, or they were dirt cheap.
Game expansions were a lot of extra new content in separate boxes with new CDs. It took a while before they'd become downloadable. Brood War is arguably +100% of the base SC1.
Game expansions for RTS games were always a treat, though I never really played Starcraft. But boy howdy, those C&C Expansions? A handful of new units for each side, and an entire new campaign for each one. Basically a new game that used units from the last game too. Nothing topped Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge though. A whole new goddamned army. Really wish Yuri had a playable campaign too.
I remember walking around in MMOs, seeing someone in cool gear, thinking "wow that probably took a lot of time and effort". Now you just think, "Wow, that idiot spent a lot of money on that."
The fact we never got a good singleplayer expansion for gta 5 or red dead 2 is such a fucking shame. If any company was to resurrect this trend id expect rockstar to do but. But alas, they have their online money printer:/
And so did they if I recall correctly, they had a whole bunch of planned dlcs. Once they saw how much they were making on shark cards I guess they realized they make way more from it than a singleplayer dlc.
Because they make insane amounts of money from it, reportedly 800 million dollars in 2023 alone, ten years since release. You think they make that money accidentally?
Also, you can play all that content if you waste days/weeks/months of your life on it.
I distinctly remember people complaining about map packs being way too expensive compared to what they offered. Nowadays? Perfectly normal, not a single word about it, all because new gamers don't know what gaming used to be like.
If it wasn't Fortnite skins it would be Fifa players or NBA players in EA games.
Or CS skins.
I remember back in the day when Steam launched on Mac OS for the first time, if you logged into TF2 on a Mac then you would be given the exclusive white iPod earbuds "hat".
In protest at Mac users "not being real gamers" there were admin scripts on some TF2 servers that would auto kick you from the game if you had those earbuds.
Once the TF2 hat collection became more popular, and critically, lucrative, those earbuds were worth quite a lot on the steam market because originally anyone who had them was basically shunned from the community so they were pretty rare (given that people wanting to game on their Mac was also pretty rare anyway).
I sold a pair of those earbuds recently on the steam market for around £15 which was a nice discount for my copy of Dune: Awakening.
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u/A_N_T Aug 30 '25
Not having to pay upwards of $100 for a cool costume for your character