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Cast your mind back to March 20, 2006. Oblivion has just come out. The world-building, scope, and sheer joy of the game are heady and contagious. This is what gaming can be, you think to yourself.
Some time passes and you hear that Bethesda is going to start releasing additional content for the game almost immediately. It’s only been out two weeks when the first micro-DLC drops and people immediately start questioning why it wasn’t included in the game.
You open up the Xbox Marketplace, eager for new content but trepidatious about what you might find. Sure enough, there it is. Premium cosmetic horse armor.
The outrage was swift and vicious. People were absolutely incensed. Microtransactions like that could be expected from companies like EA, but Bethesda was supposed to be above it.
Skyrim and Fallout 4 came and went, and people thought they had learned their lesson. Maybe the expansion into MMOs with Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online had sated their microtransaction hunger. Then some overpriced Creation Club content started to creep its way into Skyrim and Fallout 4.
It turns out that they didn’t learn a thing
This weekend, Bethesda launched a bunch of new stuff for Starfield as part of the Xbox Games Showcase, including more info about the Shattered Space DLC (though no release date) and the Creation Club content, along with a free update.
The free update included the first part of a quest line that leads the players into a new life of bounty hunting with the Tracker’s guild. You’ll notice I said the first part.
The second part can be purchased through the new Creation Club. It costs 700 credits, though you can only buy them in bundles of 1,000 for $10.
All of this is objectively terrible, but it’s made worse by the fact that the second half of the quest, the part that will set you back $10, takes approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. It’s causing people to question Bethesda’s motives behind the whole game.
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In fact, people are outright calling it a scam – “It’s literally a scam, the *goal* and the only possible goal is to get people to spend more money than they wanted to and to leave some of that money sitting (non-refundable) in an account, either as “free money” or to try to tempt people to pay for more increments to get another item,” said one disappointed Reddit user. “It’s surreal that people are just accepting this,” said another.
In fact, fans are now expressing their anger through review bombing the game’s Steam page.
Bethesda had a chance, with the new updates and the Shattered Space DLC, to regain some goodwill over Starfield. The game has left a lot of people disappointed and hoping for more. Well, you can have more, but only if you give Bethesda $10.
Featured image credit: Bethesda
