I just discovered today, entirely by accident, that Telltale Games' new retail copies of their games for consoles are "Season Pass Discs". These "Season Pass Discs" only contain certain episodes of the game and then you must download the remaining episodes with a voucher code (edit: correction - the disc itself is the "voucher" https://twitter.com/jobjstauffer/status/650326871008247808). In the case of Minecraft Story Mode, it's Ep. 1 only so you have to download eps 2-?; in the case of Game of Thrones it's Ep. 1-5 and you must download Ep. 6.

I saw a disc for Minecraft Story Mode in a store this week and thought it was strange since I did not think that game was fully out yet. Some searching later, I find (buried in the Support section for Minecraft Story Mode on the Telltale Games site under "How Much Do Episodes, Season Passes, Or Season Discs Cost?") that the disc does not include the full game.

I was surprised to find out my new copy of Game of Thrones is a "Season Pass Disc" as well, which took me by surprise because the info about this is on the back of the box in about 4-5 pt text and the store listing when I bought this online (Best Buy) said nothing about it. I had no idea. The Telltale Games site says nothing about it anywhere on the Game of Thrones page, either.

I know this does not make sense to those who have fully embraced the "digital future", but as someone who buys physical games because I want offline access to the console games I buy at any time I choose, this is a real piss-off. I'm going to return my copy of Game of Thrones - thank goodness I found out before I opened the shrink wrap.

Now, I have no idea if full retail discs are planned to come out at a later date, but I wanted to put out a "buyer beware".

Fuck everything about that.

The Minecraft one is especially shitty.

1) it's aimed at kids

2) the was only one episode out when I saw it in store

3) parents and young children are less likely to be aware of telltales business model

4) imagine buying this game for your child and the not being able to play it right away or finish for thing because you either don't have an internet ready console or the game hasn't even been fully released yet. Me thinks a disappointed child and heartbroken parent.

Telltale should sell purchase cards or wait for the game to be done before doing this. It's shitty of them

I've been an ardent Telltale Games supporter since 2006 but I have chosen to buy their newer stuff on disc for consoles because my wife and I now play most of them together; when it comes to console releases I want physical retail discs. This is a real bummer and I guess I'll either stop buying Telltale Games' series or have to go back to PC (neither option is ideal, but neither is a huge loss in the long run, I suppose).

The fact that the info on this is so buried on Telltales' own website, and especially that online store listings make no mention of it, makes this look especially shitty to me.

I always wondered how they could sell pressed discs of games that hadn't finished their 'season' yet, I guess this is how.

Seems like they wanted to rush it out for the holidays, especially in Minecraft's case.

Telltale in general has kind of become fast food. Walking Dead season 1 and Wolf Among Us were amazing, and everything after that has been disappointingly barely decent.

No reason to get internet outraged about this (it's not like they're cheating you out of anything), but i see how it can be quite confusing and a bit misleading especially in the case of people buying minecraft for kids. To me it's just an extra step, but i already have that awareness so...

@frostyryan: tales from the borderlands is their best game yet imho and this is coming from someone who expected nothing from that game as I don't care for the borderlands lore or humour.

I don't have a problem with it in and of itself, but I do feel like there are going potentially be thousands upon thousands of disappointed people (specifically children with the Minecraft one) who don't know any better. Hell, you can check Amazon right now and see a handful of people already bummed out with their purchase.

On one hand, if people did even a bit more research, they wouldn't run into this problem, but on the other hand, this is a new business practice that, for lack of a better way to put it, is being passed off as something your everyday average consumer thinks is something totally different that they're already used to. Even the previous Telltale games came complete on the disc.

I dunno, it's not the worst thing in the world, but I totally understand why people are upset.

Yeah, the biggest problem with these disks isn't that you have to download the additional episodes, it's that the packaging does an incredibly poor job of spelling out that it's not the full season on the disk (there's some small print on the front that mentions the required downloads and some equally small writing on the back to explain what's on the disk and what you have to download, but most people would probably need a magnifying glass to read it). If the box simply had "Downloads Required" or "Internet Connection Required" on the front of the packaging (with "See Back for Details or something) and in a readable size, I think most of our issues with it would be gone (I know there's the problem with Minecraft that you only get one episode on disk, but as long as the packaging makes sure you know what you're getting into, I think that's less of a problem).

@ripelivejam: Not "internet outraged" about it, just really disappointed.

While Telltale is not "cheating" anyone out of content, they are removing the choice some of their customers are making in regards to how they purchase and consume the content. They are in their rights to do so, but a customer saying it's misleading and a poor choice is hardly getting "internet outraged" about it.

edit: I also mentioned how neither Telltale's site nor online retailer's sites mention how the Season Pass Disc works unless you go really digging for the info (even then you may not find it), so it's misleading to a lot more than just people buying Minecraft for their kids.

edit2: I know you internet outrage comment is likely not pointed directly at me, just wanted to clarify my position and that this thread is intended as a legitimate "caveat emptor" situation rather than one of some sort of misguided "fuck Telltale" one ;-) I'll stop endlessly editing this now

This is disappointing, but I also feel it's kinda hopeless fight. So many physical games do this now to some degree whether it's DLC or big Day 1 Patches, it feels inevitable that our game purchase are becoming temporary to some degree

This is a terrible idea. People that buy discs do so for a reason, and this is taking that reason away from them. If they don't want to sell the whole thing on a disc then there just should not be a disc version of it. I can see a card of some kind like Xbox Live cards and such, but selling a disc with only a fraction of the content sucks.

Hopefully they will at least put out a completed disc once all the episodes have been released.

That's beyond stupid. I buy the disc versions because I want physical versions that contain the entire game. If I wanted to download them, I'd just download the entire thing.