DLC can have a bad reputation, forcing players to pay extra for their games.
Sometimes it’s done well, adding whole new stories and characters to people’s favourite games.
Wedding Stories was not a hit at launch.
But there are still plenty of games that ask you to pay for things that should be included as standard.
Here are some of the worst five DLC packs in all of video games.
The Sims 4: My Wedding Stories
The Sims has a lot of expansion packs, but as it’s now free-to-play, you can understand that it needs to make money somehow.
But it used to be a full-price release, and still drip-fed content expansions which felt like they should be in the original.
What made My Wedding Stories the worst DLC pack is that it didn’t work at launch, or for years afterwards.
Promising the ability to marry your Sims in a ceremony, the wedding events never happened giving players nothing for their money.
The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion: Horse Armour
Charging for cosmetics is now the norm in the gaming industry, but someone had to start the trend.
Before The Elder Scrolls charged $2.50 (£2) for horse armour the standard was that all costumes were unlockable in game.
This opened the floodgates and now almost every full price game has some kind of purchasable costume.
While people have spoken out about this, developers will continue adding it as long as people buy it.
Sonic Lost World: 25 Lives
Alongside the launch of Sonic Lost World was a DLC pack that felt completely unnecessary.
As the name suggests, this pack gave you 25 extra lives, which is laughable for two reasons.
Firstly, lives are very easy to come by, and something people shouldn’t feel the need to purchase, and secondly, a game released in 2013 shouldn’t really have a lives system at all.
Fully leaning into the idea that gamers will buy anything, there are plenty of similar DLC packs in games today.
Asura’s Wrath: True Ending
When it comes to JRPGs, it’s not unusual to have a ‘True Ending’ hidden somewhere deep in the game.
This usually requires some complex task, such as a number of side quests or saving every character.
Asura’s Wrath took a different approach, and instead of asking players to unlock the ending, they asked them to buy it instead.
The DLC unlocked a final boss and an extra cutscene but gave none of the joy you feel from unlocking it yourself.
Train Simulator Classic: All 800 packs
Train Simulator has a unique business model where you can upgrade to the newest game for free, but new trains and routes have to be purchased separately.
This might sound like a good deal for fans until you realise the overall cost for each of the items.
So far there have been 807 packs released, with many of them costing as much as a full-priced game.
Over the years since release, the total amount of DLC adds up to around $10k (£8k)!
Written by Ryan Woodrow and Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
