The Gaming Industry and DLC

A regular at Delay of Game posted this recently, and it's a real shame because it's true.

1999 and just beyond is what I consider to be the golden age of gaming. We got amazing retail products with excellent, honest to God expansion packs released and, not reflected in the picture, game add-ons (modern day DLC) released for free. What a time to game in!

Around 2005 convergence began to really happen as consoles finally caught up to the power of PC gaming and publishers and developers began re-evaluating their add-on and content distribution models. This was also the first time console-only gamers really had the opportunity to experience the kind of additional content, multiplayer gaming, and software updates that PC gamers have enjoyed and taken for granted for a decade and more. The console gamer's experience was still limited by everything being forced through publisher controlled first party services, but it was there none-the-less.

Now? Now we get incomplete products shipped as retail releases and we're nickle and dimed for overpriced DLC that provide a fraction of the experience of yesteryear at an inflated cost.

This is what we, the consumer, have allowed the games industry to decline into because we keep supporting not just these lesser-but-flashier retail releases, but also DLC as we know it today; the worst thing to happen to this generation of gaming. We now have a lesser and more costly experience as the norm, and it's all our faults. We're ruining gaming for ourselves through apathy and ignorance.