What is up with Mass Effect DLC?

[Sulimo]

Story time!

So, I was bored and decided to see if I could get Dragon Age: Inquisition for a decent price with all DLC included. I downloaded origin, saw a GOTY!!11!!! edition with all DLC included and tucked in for a hundred hours of butthurt about hp-bloaty enemies and such. All was well in the world. Then I decided I might as well see if I could replay the Mass Effect Trilogy, because I haven't touched that with a ten foot pole since not removing it from the inventory back when it was released. Went to origin, saw the Mass Effect Trilogy for sale for 20 of my local currency, and then noticed the fucking DLC wasn't included.

Not falling for the bait and intrigued, I delved deeper.

I looked for the DLC on the origin store - it was not there.
I looked for the DLC on steam - it was not there.
I looked for the DLC on the googles - it referred me to bioware itself, where the DLC was available in all its glory, 4 years after release, for the same price it was back when the games were released, in bioware's special needs currency of bioware points.
I looked on reddit, where the friendly neckbeards told me the story DLC all together would cost me about 70 of my local currency, on top of the price of the trilogy pack itself. I laughed, shrugged and then decided I didn't want to pay 90 euros for three 6 year old games.

And not even that, all the DLC for ME2/3 added up costs 6480 bioware points. One can buy said bioware points in amounts of 1600, 1200 and 800. Please note it's just about 80 more than 4x1600, thus ripping you off even more and leaving you standing there with your dick in one hand and 720 bioware points that you can't spend on anything else in the other hand.

So, why would bioware do such a thing? I would gladly pay, let's say, 30 of my local currency to assuage my guilt over pirating the shit out of them in my younger days and to relive the shlock of Mass Effect, but after seeing that I suddenly don't feel so bad about stealing from them anymore. Are Mass Effect fans really such rubes that they'd allow themselves to get fucked over in the proverbial company store by paying with worthless scrip? I honestly don't get it. Either there's financial mismanagement going on over there or they can squeeze more money from their 'fans' by charging full buck for the DLC than from simply releasing a GOTY edition.

Ah well, rant over. Please tell me I am a genius/a retard/whatever, or feel free to ignore this ramble all together. Please vote in the poll though, it's important for my research.

 

[SCO]

Since you're obviously a glutton for punishment, why didn't you pay and be true to your nature?

 

[racofer]

Disregarding the fact you want to play ME, that's why you pirate stuff.

 

[Mozg]

It's for sure not exploitive because it isn't maximizing the income Bioware gets - other companies drop prices over time for a reason, because you make more money that way.

In fact it's probably some legal thing they did with the Bioware "points" currency thing on a given platform or something that makes it so they can't do the typical price drops. They'd probably have to spend a fair amount of money getting it unsnarled and it's not worth it, plus they get some experimental data to see how many people buy full price DLC many years after a product has come out. Speculation on my part but I don't know why anything else would be the case.

 

[pippin]

I think you can pay the dlcs for actual money in consoles, instead of being forced to use that bioware points shit.
IIRC there are characters and choices tied to DLCs that can offer more content for the base games, considering the import feature. Without spoiling too much, if you had the dlc for ME1 and completed its mission in the best possible manner, you can get extra resources when you meet one of its characters again in 3. I didn't had all the dlc when I played the Trilogy, but I'm led to believe there are more situations like this in the game. However, you will be able to get the best possible ending for ME3 if you play the games just as they are, but you would still have to pay for ME3's jamaican frog, for instance.
It's shit, but I can't be angry at it anymore. Partly because I'd prefer to use that energy in more productive things like fapping.

 

[Frozen]

thepiratebay is your friend

 

[oldmanpaco]

I demoed all the ME2 DLC and all of ME3 (game + DLC). EA makes it deliberately difficult to buy their shit so fuck them.

 

[Malpercio]

ME3 has probably the most obvious example of "Content cut so they could sell it at DLC" ever seen.