Game News Risen 2 -- preorder to get the full game

[Elwro]

Apparently Piranha Bytes wants you to pay £8.00 extra or preorder Risen 2 to get access to the full game, GameBanshee reports.

The DLC with the fitting name “Treasure Isle” offers exclusive additional content for the intrepid adventurer. The player will embark on an extra story questline to uncover Captain Steelbeard’s legendary treasure – a quest that will continue a plot element from the first Risen game and finally bring it to an exciting conclusion.​

(...)​

The player will discover a legendary item (only available in this DLC) – offering his character a permanent stat boost.​

Frankly, I thought Piranha Bytes knew better than that. Cutting content from the game and releasing it as a paid DLC / pre-order "bonus"? I wouldn't expect something like this from the team which always brought us good value for money. It also seems that The Witcher 2's "preorder to get stat-boosting equipment" idea will sadly stay in the genre.

This exclusive pre-order bonus DLC with a value of £8.00 / 800 Microsoft Points, will be made available in selected territories at participating retailers.​

Apparently they also don't know what "exclusive" means.

Spotted at: GameBanshee.

 

[Metro]

As big a PB fan as I am I'm not going to sugar coat this -- pretty on their part. That said I intended to preorder the game anyway if I can find it around $35ish.

 

[Jasede]

I can't say I like this, and I don't really think PB's (very loyal) fans will appreciate it much either. Let's see how much of an improvement over Risen this game will be. I am a little wary, but we'll have to see.

 

[Elwro]

Metro: Eh, it's the same for me if the Polish publisher also offers this deal. What can I say, I'm a PB fanboy.

At the same time it's f*.*ing infuriating,

 

[Jasede]

You get brand new games for 35$ in Poland?

 

[Black_Willow]

Now where was that emote...
Oh, here it is!

 

[Metro]

Yeah, I never preorder games but Risen 2 and Torchlight 2 are probably the two exceptions in terms of upcoming releases this year where I feel the developers can't really go wrong. Hard to imagine Risen 2 being worse than Risen though I guess stranger things have happened.

 

[Elwro]

You get brand new games for 35$ in Poland?

I'm very tired right now, and sorry, I simply don't understand what you are referring to. Could you explain? By "the deal" I meant "getting the full game by preordering".

 

[Jasede]

Don't bother trying to make sense of anything I say, as a rule it's rubbish.

I was referring to Metro's post who wrote he'd preorder it if he can get it somewhere for 35$. It was above your post.

You should go to sleep, Mr. PhD-man!

 

[Metro]

I am a proud :patriot: . However, Green Man Gaming usually puts up preorders on most major releases at 25% off and they are U.K. based.

 

[waywardOne]

Frankly, I thought Piranha Bytes knew better than that. Cutting content from the game and releasing it as a paid DLC / pre-order "bonus"? I wouldn't expect something like this from the team which always brought us good value for money. It also seems that The Witcher 2's "preorder to get stat-boosting equipment" idea will sadly stay in the genre.

I'm not saying it's not decline anyway, but even BG2 had "bonus merchants" with some of the most OP shit in the series.

 

[Jasede]

True, but he was easy to add manually, and besides, it's Bioware.

Also, Green Man Gaming? I'll have to remember that.

 

[Metro]

http://www.greenmangaming.com/

 

[Roguey]

Piranha Bytes goes full Bioware. Interesting how this is the year the biggest European RPG developers (PB, CD Projekt, Larian) decide to really chase the console market.

 

[curry]

This makes the decision not buy but to acquire R2 easy.

By the way, last October Daniel Oberlerchner said

people are feeling betrayed because they have to shell out 50 - 70 Euros for a game and yet they still have to shell out more through micro-payments

Funny how things change

 

[Spectacle]

Oh dear.
I guess I will go with the edition from the other "PB" then.
I fucking hate these day1 DLCs. It's not really about having to pay extra for part of the game, but that you never know if it's something that is part of the game concept that was cut out to milk money off cusomers, or some random bullshit slapped together to milk money off customers.

 

[Shannow]

Frankly, I thought Piranha Bytes knew better than that. Cutting content from the game and releasing it as a paid DLC / pre-order "bonus"? I wouldn't expect something like this from the team which always brought us good value for money. It also seems that The Witcher 2's "preorder to get stat-boosting equipment" idea will sadly stay in the genre.

Companies do good money with that. I always felt that NotR was already quite obviously cut from the vanilla game and felt milked when I bought it. But G2 being my favourite game evar I don't feel that bad having paid 65€ (or whatever it was) for a game that should have cost 40€.
So while I'm disappointed once again I'm not surprized.
PB differ from other devs in that they usually provide good games, they do not differ in that they won't jump any bandwagon that promises them more money. But in contrast to eg. CDP they never claimed otherwise, AFAIK.

 

[Elwro]

Well NotR was decidedly not "day 1 DLC". Maybe the content was cut, but at the moment it was cut it was not finished (I think).

 

[Spectacle]

Companies do good money with that. I always felt that NotR was already quite obviously cut from the vanilla game and felt milked when I bought it. But G2 being my favourite game evar I don't feel that bad having paid 65€ (or whatever it was) for a game that should have cost 40€.

This attitude that a game "should" cost some particular amount of money is one of the reasons we're in this DLC mess in the first place. Consumers won't buy a game if it costs more that the standard price, so it's not a viable option for developers to put resources into making a game with more and higher quality content and sell it at a higher price to recoup that investment. Instead they need to break up the game into base and DLC, so that neither costs so much that it goes over the average game buyer's irrational price ceiling.[/quote]

 

[Shannow]

Companies do good money with that. I always felt that NotR was already quite obviously cut from the vanilla game and felt milked when I bought it. But G2 being my favourite game evar I don't feel that bad having paid 65€ (or whatever it was) for a game that should have cost 40€.

This attitude that a game "should" cost some particular amount of money is one of the reasons we're in this DLC mess in the first place. Consumers won't buy a game if it costs more that the standard price, so it's not a viable option for developers to put resources into making a game with more and higher quality content and sell it at a higher price to recoup that investment. Instead they need to break up the game into base and DLC, so that neither costs so much that it goes over the average game buyer's irrational price ceiling.

But that's not the way it works either. It's not like games, that cost a lot in production, try to make up for it through DLC/cheap expansions, while games that were rather cheap to make say "Well, normal full price will pay for our investment, so we don't need DLC.". Everybody asks the same - or at least a very similar - full price, whether the game cost 4 mio or 20 mio to make. The only requirement is that the production values seem high enough to justify full price.Still you have studios investing vastly differing amounts of money. And nearly everybody who thinks he can get away with DLC will implement it; again, independant of the actual production cost.
DLC is (probably) a way of increasing profit. Even if games's prices were somehow dependant on their demand (like a stockmarket) and people were used to paying higher prices for games that are in high demand - we live in capitalism, enough is never enough - they'd still make use of DLC because they'd expect it to even further increase their profits. To put it another way: Games with higher investments are expected to have better sales (skill of the studio, mass-appeal and advertising of course also play major roles). That's how studios expect to recoup their investments in the current system. DLC really doesn't factor in (apart from being an easy way to get extra profits).
TL;DR: I don't agree with your statement because games with more money invested != more/better content, and the industry will always try to increase its profits in any way it sees as viable.

 

[curry]

NoTR was released a year after G2 so it's not a day one DLC - I'd call it a shitty expansion

 

[Jaesun]

Frankly, I thought Piranha Bytes knew better than that.

It is usually the Publisher, not developer that comes up with this stupid marketing bullshit. This stupid idea is probably courtesy of Deep Silver's Retarded Marketing Department.

 

[Skittles]

I tried shooting them a polite email, asking about their DLC plans and when they might release a full version of the game, with all the bells on. I got this:

Dear [REDACTED],

please refer all questions regarding Risen 2, whether they concern
dates, content, amount or whatever else to our publisher Deep Silver.
We are not allowed to give out any such information and therefore will
not do so.

Regards,
Michael Rüve

Is that language-barrier curtness or I'm-not-pleased-about-this curtness?

EDIT: So, I think I broke the quote tags. If you accidentally change the colour of some of the characters, it breaks the tags. And for some reason it's auto inserting the close quote code for me....
EDIT2: Fixed now.

 

[commie]

What's the problem? Troika with Arcanum gave out preorder DLC once upon a time and Troika is loved unreservedly here....

 

[Phelot]

So long as day one DLC isn't something that obviously should be included in vanilla, I don't have much of a problem with it other than that it is lame. These sort of DLCs always end up being balance breaking or for LARPing. I bet no one will miss this DLC.