Read an argument about this today on Penny-Arcade that I agree with. If you're not pirating games, you're giving your money to someone; Gamestop for a used game, another developer for a different game so that you can trade, Gamefly for a rental, or the actual people who made the game you're enjoying. In the end, money is exchanging hands.
Developers have realized, in this competition for your money, they have to convince you in more than just one way. There are positive ways to approach this: unique content for people who buy the game (sometimes done sneakily, think of free upgrades to "X Edition" if you pre-order in advance), or a game that has a compelling multiplayer that would require more than one person own the game. And then there are not so positive ways to approach this: I'm most familiary with what Ubisoft did last week -- stick 160 or so gamer points on a ten dollar map pack with three recycled maps from AC:B and three unique new maps (no thanks, getting a 100% on a game I like isn't enough incentive when I could use the same amount of money for a much better purchase -- Limbo anyone?).
It's my feeling that having a unique code that activates your product and lets you use additional content is one of the more positive approaches for two very simple reasons: if you love the game, you have a heavy incentive to pay the people that developed the game; if you don't think you'll love the game, you can still enjoy what the developer considers core to the game. There are counter arguments that I feel are valid (some more so than others, I'll deal with the silliest one first).
I know that you're not in actuality paying the people that develop the game, you're paying people that package, advertise, and sell the game. But in reality, these people also bank-rolled the game, and will be more likely to bank-roll future ventures from said developer if the game does well. Done with the silly counter-argument.
The real counterargument is how access to these materials is handled. I feel that video gaming on consoles has been handled well. My gamer tag is tied to the things I have purchased and I will continue to have access to these things as long as I'm on my console, and if I get a new console, MS has given me a simple way of transferring ownership. On compuers, the straight forward argument does not work because computer gamers, to put it simply, "kinda messed up." If the myth I heard long ago is true, Doom was installed on more computers than Windows 3.1 (a significant number of these installations had the full game without having paid for it). This is the underlying problem: it is far easier to pirate a computer game than it is to pirate a console game. Thus, computer gamers are punished. This is unfair for the current generation of computer games, and people have responded to this by not purchasing computer games from certain publishers due to the Draconian DRM; however, this method is doomed to fail with the worst publishers because as it is, computers are a much smaller segment of sales from many cross-platform games. In other words, people abused computer game developers for so long that they decided they needed a different way of making money, they made games for a weaker (but unified and restricted) platform and can now figure out a model that ensures they make money.
TL;DR version -- This method is fair and works if you want to support a developer for doing a good job on consoles. If you're gaming on a PC, stick to MMOs, that's the only model that will continue to earn developers money on that platform given current production costs for any game and the abismal PC sales for anything other than an MMO.
P.S. If my argument is accurate, then I should make a prediction. Here it is. Witcher 2 sales on the XBOX 360 will dwarf its sales on the PC, and in response Red Project's next game will be multiplatform.
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