Does DLC give Developers the right to rush games?

The Xbox 360 and now the PlayStation 3 have been around since the internet has become a big part of gaming. Both consoles trying to outdo each other in the online community they support in unique ways. While this is great for the user, it does create a new problem that did not exist a few years ago, games seem to be rushed out the door before they are ready. This seems to be happening more and more without any regulations to the industry. Gamers are buying games when they are released, being very excited to play it only to find there is a potentially game breaking glitch that a patch is being worked on. These glitches can be quite annoying and throw users off the game indefinitely, I know if I invested over five hours into a game and my save got wiped out that I would not play that game for a while because it would feel like a chore at this point. However the game developers and publishers have made their money at this point and in the end they are not obligated to even make a patch, it’s more of a choice to do so to keep their customers happy eventually. These patches are great since it will make the game playable again but there are still gamers out there that don’t play online and have no internet access, these people have essentially bought a broken game with no compensation.

Also since many more users are online Downloadable Content (DLC) has become a very big and lucrative business for companies to employ, giving users more life out of their games. While some Developers are doing a great job giving content to gamers, there are a few that have done nothing but gouge the gamers out of their hard earned money. The Xbox community is still laughing about Oblivion’s Horse Armour, a totally useless item but at least it looked cool, but now there are worse offenders. Recently 2K came out with Mafia 2, which a great game by itself but then a few weeks after release DLC was released that added to the game something that should have been included on the disk, essentially side mission. Another Developer that dropped the ball on all systems was Capcom with Resident Evil 5’s online mode, it was on the disk but they charged gamers to unlock it. In the end the users are losing out the most here, game prices are slowly climbing and we are getting less content. These bad Developers should take note from the good guys out there like Rockstar, who’s DLC  is practically full games (Lost and Damned, Ballad of Gay Tony) or Remedy who gave their first piece of DLC for Allan Wake away for free to anyone who bought the game early on (Rockstar also gave away the first piece of DLC away for Red Dead Redemption).

Ever since these broken games and DLC gouging have started showing up gamers are always saying that we can choose not to buy something and vote with our wallets. While a few of us do seem to stick to that, a majority seems to say this mantra but go out and buy these broken games anyways. As long as these companies make money they will use the tactics that will give them the most dollars for the least work.  So gamers now have to start making judgement calls, “will this game be worth the money? Can I live with these bugs until a patch is released, if it is ever released?”, and make the smart decisions because this trend does not seem to be going anywhere. Maybe there should be a public website created where the worst offenders could be listed and more importantly the companies that are going a great job to get the respect they should.