Ryu's Ultimate Combo

It is extremely difficult to convince a customer to use a product, let alone to be a brand ambassador for it. It’s a process that takes time, money and forces the product’s creator to often forego revenue with no guarantee that you’ll ever make that money back. However, if you’re in it for the long run, the benefits of brand loyalty will far outweigh your losses in the short term.

Though there are countless examples, let’s take a look at the gaming world for a case study. Recently Capcom released a downloadable game add-on for the game Resident Evil 5. Less than 2MB of content was actually downloaded to disk, yet it cost $5. The small download led to speculation that the downloadable content (DLC) was just a key to unlock what was already on the disc. That, in turn, brought up discussion of whether gamers should be entitled to everything on a game disc or not. Ben Fritz from The Cut Scene believes it is “a rather ridiculous attitude of entitlement that gamers need to lose“.

I think this is exactly the problem at hand. Even if it comes from a selfish sense of entitlement, why are we looking to blame gamers? For developers, the added benefit of appeasing gamers should offset the monetary reward and knowledge that you’ve incensed a community of users who have already spent $60 on your product. Two biggest software developers, Blizzard and Valve, are well known for their product support. In fact, there have been nearly 100 updates for Team Fortress 2 since launch. And Left 4 Dead is coming out with a big multiplayer update within the next month. The best news? None of these updates cost a cent after the original purchase. Blizzard still supports Diablo II, a game that’s coming up on 10 years old.

Resident Evil 5 is a title that has shipped 4 million units since launch, but some of its biggest fans are turning sour on the franchise. With a little more attention to customers and a little less focus on the short-term bottom line, this might not have happened. Right now there is a turning point in the industry, where game developers are supporting games more than ever, but some choose to do it for free (often PC developers), while others do it by offering game add-ons and paid downloadable content. If you have the ability and opportunity to build brand loyalty and create uberfans and brand loyalists for your product, why not forego extra profit in order to create long-lasting relationships with your customers? Yes, it’s a scary thought, but if you’re in it for the long haul, isn’t it worth it to your brand? When a map pack is a $4.99 purchase, and a game is $59.99, wouldn’t you rather have an extra 200K people buying your next title at launch than an extra 1M people downloading your PDLC? Software developers need to look at the long run. It’s time to stop nickel-and-diming consumers and to give them what they want. Not only does releasing additional content for free make ethical sense, but five years down the line, shareholders will appreciate it too.