I thought I'd relay a story of epic video game developer FAIL that I've only recently become aware of. It's kind of awe-inspiringly stupid. Not sure how many people know about this already, it's actually about six months old.
I had ended up playing some Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 with my brother when I was visiting him just before we both flew back to my parents' place for Christmas (I only live a few hours away from my brother by Amtrak, so it's easier for us to just meet up and head back on the same flight). In any case, there were a couple of downloadable characters, some of whom were pretty cool, like Juggernaut, Magneto, and Cable, among others.
So now it's six months later, and I'm thinking the price has dropped enough on it that I'm up for buying it now. Amazon didn't disappoint me, and I ordered it for $15.
But here's the bizarre thing. I discovered after buying it that Activision had
removed all of MUA2's DLC, for both the PS3 and 360. I did a double and then a triple-take. Huh? This made no sense. They had already spent time developing the extra content, and it was not free content, but content you had to pay for. Why would you remove DLC that only stands to make you more money? What possible gain could there be? Does Activision just
dislike making money? Moreover, this caused a serious problem with online multiplayer: people who had downloaded the extra characters could no longer play online with those who hadn't.
The only official statement Activision made was this: "The Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Downloadable Content was a limited time offer, expiring on December 31, 2009." They made this statement on January 7th, 2010, a week after the content expired. There was no indication of the content being for a limited time anywhere before this date. In another classy move, they still list the characters as playable on their official site, and make no mention to the unsuspecting buyer that the content is no longer available. There's even achievements listed on both systems which require the additional characters... which it appeared no one who had not downloaded the content before the end of 2009 could ever complete. To this day, Activision still has never explained the removal of the content.
Still, it looks like there may be a happy ending. There are recent reports that
Activision has agreed to make the content available again until the end of 2010... they are trying to get it back up before the 4th of July. This announcement came from an admin of a Marvel forum only three days ago after six months of radio silence from Activision on the issue.
Anyway, I just thought I'd relay this bit of epic developer fail. I really just don't get it. They really created a lot of bad will for themselves doing this... I can't imagine that it wouldn't have been better to either keep the content available or, failing that, at
least give some sort of explanation that people would understand. The only thing I can think of is that it might have something to do with the Disney buyout. But I'm really not sure why that would be an issue for content already released. In any case, it's never a good idea to have rabid Marvel fans screaming at you for six months, many of whom had gotten the game for Christmas and then found themselves unable to download the DLC. Talk about your stupid moves...
