There are a lot of scams that we’ve all just had to accept when playing video games. $20 cosmetic items, pay-to-win gacha games, and battle passes that can expire after you buy them. It feels like every year, there’s a new way for major publishers to prey on anyone with a credit card.
I can understand the logic in buying some of the things that I view to be scams. Just because I don’t want to pay $20 to play asSabrina Carpenter in Fortnitedoesn’t mean I can’t get why someone might do that, but there’s one gaming scam that I simply do not understand, and believe me, I’ve tried.
Digital deluxe editions are a plague that must be purged from gaming for the rest of time.
Is that a little too harsh?
A Whole Lotta’ Nothin’
Let’s break down what’s included in the digital deluxe edition forAssassin’s Creed Shadows, for example. It costs $89.99, $20 more than the base game, and people who buy it will receive one set of legendary gear for both Naoe and Yasuke, a legendary sword for both characters, a cosmetic mount, a single legendary trinket, four small cosmetics for your in-game base, and five skill points.
For $20 extra, you get gear sets, weapons, and a trinket that almost instantly becomes obsolete thanks to the sheer amount of loot Assassin’s Creed Shadows showers you in, wall decorations for your base that are literally blink-and-you’ll-miss-it set dressing,five skill points to get you started on your path of acquiring hundreds more, and horse armor.
I find this to be incredibly underwhelming but not atypical for what most digital deluxe editions include. They’re usually packed full of gaudy cosmetics that clash with the game’s art design, a few skill points that don’t really matter since players will be getting skill points through the game anyway, loot that needs to be immediately replaceable because gifting extremely overpowered items right off the bat breaks the balance of the game, and that’s kind of it.
There’s nothing here that adds anything of value to the game, nothing that makes the digital deluxe edition worth a buy or even worth considering.
More Stuff Does Not Equal More Value
Not all digital deluxe editions are so content-light, however. Some publishers try to sweeten the pot with extras like digital art books or digital soundtracks. While I appreciate the thought, I find these sorts of extras to be just as worthless as the skill points.
Digital art books are cool to look through, but I rarely find myself sitting down wanting to play a video game, but instead of doing that, I decide to page through some concept art. I love art books, but I want them as books; I want to be able to examine them closely, and I don’t engage with them in the same way that I engage with a game. I don’t want to be looking at a screen to look at art, I want to physically see it.
I like digital soundtracks even less than digital artbooks. I love video game music, but there isn’t a reality where I’m going to open an app on my PS5 exclusively devoted to playing the soundtrack fromthe Silent Hill 2 remakewhile I just sit there. Video game music is incredible, but there are countless other more convenient ways of listening to it that don’t also require my console’s exclusive attention.
Offering digital soundtracks on PC is a decent thing to include in a digital deluxe edition since they’re often able to be downloaded onto your hard drive and put onto other devices, but as they stand on consoles, they’re still just not worth it.
Digital Clutter In Digital Storefronts
“If you don’t like it, don’t buy it,” I can already hear people saying. While I understand that logic in a vacuum, there’s one final piece of digital deluxe editions that makes them entirely unavoidable and the most annoying thing in the world: they add so much clutter to digital storefronts that it makes it almost impossible to find the base game.
When I boughtWarhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2last year, I literally could not find a version that cost less than $100 through the search tool in the PlayStation store. I almost thought that there wasn’t a regular version on PS5 because the store was only interested in showing me the various deluxe versions. I ended up having to buy the game through the PlayStation website and download it from my library once it was added, but I shouldn’t have had to do that.
Obviously, people are buying digital deluxe editions since they’re inescapable otherwise, publishers wouldn’t bother, but I just find them so irritating. I don’t think they add anything of value to the experience of playing a game unless, when buying it, you get access to the game early(which is usually a disaster and another major gaming scam). The digital extras they include are the video game equivalent of packing peanuts. They’re digital garbage, they’re wallpaper – literally, two of the cosmetics from the Assassin’s Creed Shadows deluxe edition arejust wallpapers.
It’s still a scam, but at least if you pay $20 to look like Sabrina Carpenter in Fortnite,you might be spared from being killed. What do you get from a digital Silent Hill 2 soundtrack other than crushing guilt from the heinous thing you’ve done?
That’s from the wife-murdering, not the extra money you paid that incentivizes publishers to sell more digital deluxe editions, but, hey, if the shoe fits.
