escopr

Taco Bell™

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I have an american version of the game but downloaded the maps from the dutch ps store? Although I doubt it..

I really wanna play Facing Worlds!
Anyone?

RonB28

downpour
throne
necris island
perfect temple from goldeneye
harbor
tokey towers
orbital deconstruction
flatwars
fragpipe2k8 from quake 2
shipment from CoD4

i believe the mod community can flourish from console support. lets be honest...a lot of maps that were fan made in the doom era were crap. sophisticated tools like ue3 editor cuts out a lot of hacks and makes room for people to make serious maps for serious play. i dont want to waste time looking through legions of maps based some clown's penis. downpour is one of the greatest dm/tdm maps i've ever played. the quality of the list of maps in my rotation is as good as many of the best retail releases. as a matter of fact, i question turok, cod4, halo 3 map packs. ut3 has more content available than all those map packs combined and its free. if ut3 doesn't have a halo3 map for example, it can be made for it as well as weapons, game modes, vehicles. this is why i love this series.

Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.

Witzbold

One of the reasons communities around old-ass games like Marathon and Doom never quite die either is because of the ease of the tools. I can throw together a basic Marathon 2 MP map in 20 minutes, with no real prep work (yeah it would suck but thats not my point), but trying to use Unreal Editor is kind of daunting.

Long story short, good PC maps themselves are becoming less likely to be available/free, and you (ErskinPig, Lokku, others making this argument) expect them to be free on consoles, where an even higher level of technical ability/game access is required, when the devs own programmers logged hours making them?

I love that Epic does this, and I hope other devs follow their example, but shouting a "FREE DLC" rallying cry all over the 'net isn't gonna change things. Nor are you going to stop any of us buying games we want to buy, and then buying DLC if we think the game is good enough to merit it.

The real solution? Put all this time and energy into becoming programmers/designers yourselves, and then one day it will be your call. Props if thats already where you're headed ;)

DaiMacculate

clintonskneecap

vantesaur

Seriously, I didn't think I'd have to clarify my statements; I figured most Kotaku readers would see the blatant mistakes in Microsoft's size restrictions.

But, this has been already addressed by someone much more qualified: [kotaku.com]

NO - I didn't mean get rid of all size limitations.
YES - Its current format is flawed (especially when this problem isn't found on competing networds, like PSN where they don't have that ridiculous rule)!

/Napoleon Dynamite - "Gosh!"

Arttemis

SAKY

Good on SONY for allowing this and EPIC for making it happen.

SAKY

BornToFlail

However, nothing lasts forever. As another posted already pointed out, game engines were becoming more and more complex to a point where mods became few and far between. Mods no longer became a selling point as they once used to be. Things in the PC gaming world really began to change once the Battlefield series came into the scene and team-based gameplay became the norm (moreso than what Tribes and TFC had).

All the old communities have moved on. Even in QuakeCon you see very little id games being played.

Tepoz

Yes, skins/mods/maps were historically free on the PC, but that history doesn't exist for consoles. (Altough recently, the Battlefield series has been successful in releasing pay to play maps/weapons/vehicles on the PC.) Yes, historically PC's have been an open platform with "anything goes" but consoles have not.

As far as your points concerning Valve, nothing is holding Sony from offereing content for free. Sony is a competitor and is not owned by Microsoft. UTIII is exclusive to the PS3 so downloadable content between the two platforms is really a moot point, and UTIII is not even a major seller on the PS3.

Also, the market pays what the market wants. Whether you agree or not with for pay maps/mods/weapons/vehicles or not, the general consumer always has the final word in anything.

Tepoz

Is it expected that developers will release free content? No. But I'd argue that it's expected that if developers release content, it's free.

ATimson

Also brings dizzyness, as I remember playing UT as one of my fist 3D OpenGl accelerated games with my all mighty and powerfull Power VR card. There a trick to it, Mark. Look at the ground youre stepping on. Astronauts in space also need a fix point of reference in order to avoid such dizziness and desorientation.

Still, hard to fault the beauty of Face, back then and still looking good by todays standards. Im purposly tryign to forget what a nightmare it is to defende the flag on it, tough...

Shiryu

ErskinPig

Barbara

Guizzy

If nothing else, the fact that both Valve and Epic want to allow mods and maps for free on the 360, but MS is (apparently) not letting them is abhorent. I'm sure everyone can agree on that.

[kotaku.com]

[kotaku.com]

[kotaku.com]

ErskinPig

Does that make it something that was expected of developers? No, it does not.

Guizzy

ShockTerminal

Starcraft, Diablo 1 and 2 were definitively online games in design, yet they didn't have free content.

You can add Half-Life to that if want, it still applies: Counter-Strike was a user-made mod before Valve bought it. They couldn't simply yank it shut and make it payware, since it was already free when they bought it. They still tried, though, by selling it retail, adding in-game ads...

And UT. Where, pray tell, are the original UT's free developer map packs?

Guizzy

If they charge for it, I'll gladly pay for map packs and other DLC- it extends the enjoyment I get out of a title and it supports the game creators. If it's free, that's great. But personally I don't feel comfortable with begrudging people that charge for their hard work and feeling entitled to own it for free.

Madeira

"Is this the patch that makes the game fun?"

:)

henhowc

ATimson

ceilingFANBOY

Certainly there is no ambiguity as far as map packs are concenred - they should be free, period.

ErskinPig

Erwin

Spiderbait

ErskinPig

Papa Midnight

Now tell me DM-Morpheus is in there and we're all set.

Double bonus points for CTF-4Faces

Papa Midnight

Your comment is barely worth responding to, but yes: MS were first company to offer serious online gaming. MS insist on charging for map packs that have always been free in the past. MS created the climate and culture for abuse. MS are indeed to blame for starting it all. I wasn't suggesting that they're now the only ones that abuse the system, however, but that was obvious to anyone with a brain.

ErskinPig

Phlycheez

offthewall234

Saying that MS are soley to blame for ripping people off for downloadable content is foolish and shortsighted.

NecronomiconUK

GamingNinja

Zwei Voltage

Livid

Delicious and free! I will go eat then.

TokeYo

Certainly though, Valve and Epic have consistently released free shit and continue to do so....apart from where M$ puts a big roadblock in their path of course. Valve, owning CS and Epic owning UT had two of the three biggest online MP games out there at the turn of the millenium (never played Q3 myself, so not sure about that one) so that alone means they pretty much wrote the precedent book on the subject and makes it an 'established practice'. But then, I'm assuming you knew that already but chose to selectively ignore it in order to argue an anti-consumerist point of view. I find that odd...

@Erwin: Yes, sadly so. This is a controversial issue I'm afraid, not everyone is happy to let M$ rape gaming.

Of course it costs money for them to make it. They employ people who are spending their time making this stuff. That's not the point. The point is, some developers have the sense to see the bigger picture and believe in old fashioned stuff like providing added value and building a reputation as a consumer-friendly company that supports and rewards their customers for buying the core product - the sale of which has already massively offset any trivial costs incurred in making a few extra maps. It may also encourage others that have not yet bought the game to pick up a copy when they see the ongoing support it's receiving and all the bonus stuff that is continually added to it. 'Look after your customer, and your customer will look after you' as the saying goes. So it doesn't need to even be seen as some altruistic act of self-sacrifice because that really doesn't reflect the reality. At the end of the day, if it would seriously harm their business to offer this stuff for free THEY WOULDN'T DO IT! So in a nutshell, costs are a NON-ISSUE.

The Halo Pack, yep I know it's down to M$ - in fact MS are solely to blame for putting the CON in Downloadable Content. It's rarely the developers that are at fault here, it's almost always their publishing overlords. Believe me, I get that.

People who are willing to pay are frankly docile fools with more mony than sense. They will fuel the abuse of the system and will only encourage further butchery of games even right from the design stage. If we're not careful, we'll soon be paying to unlock each stage in a game.

Make no mistake, this is an insidious crisis that will get worse & worse unless it's nipped in the bud soon.

ErskinPig

MosesMonster

evslin

Allcars

Christ that was my entire 9th, 10th, and 11th grades right there XD

Dauragon C. Mikado

JoltFiend

Dathmar

Lokku

J. Kyle

Great job EPIC!

Now, it may be a day or so before I play it, currently entranced as I am by Ninja Gaiden DS...;)

DaiMacculate

Tom Clancy's Samuraidino

Erwin

What was that original UT map on the roofs of buildings with low gravity? i loved that!

NecronomiconUK

Dukeman330

hamandcheeseUK

ultraViolence

Guizzy

:P

Cool. I'll be trying those this week-end for sure.

Woodwater

In a way. In a way it's also a good thing. The limit prevents devs releasing the games unecessarily big. Huge XBLA titles would discourage the instant gratification download, and would kill a lot of looks from people who don't have large HDD, or for people that download all of them.

Overall, the limit is good for developers and users as more people will download the games because they don't have to wait long, and they can fit a lot of them on their HDD so people will be more likely to check a game out that maybe they wouldn't if it took longer than a few minutes to download.

The limit might sound like a lame idea for you or me, but I'm sure that's at least a part of the reasoning behind why it is probably a good idea overall. I like how it is now, with MS easing the limit for select cases.

Madeira

No, seriously.

MykalBloom

pb00

And thank you Epic, one of the many reasons why I love PC gaming.

Free developer support!

EnigmaNemesis

Wolfers

Erwin

Tepoz

excel_excel

LittlestLamshi

EPIC, thank you

johnnylineup

cdr

Pantsman

best map ever made for any game!

bednarz

Archaotic

Tikey

half-beast

Man, I remember my trying out my friend's new trackball- mouse(lol) in this game and trying my hardest to keep the screen pointed somewhere other than the void of space for fear of puking.

Also - Good luck on the alien baby, Mark! Make sure to keep your small pets out of the area for following days.

Arttemis

mikeeb13

Bearskopff

Kotaku - The Happy Clique for Hypocrites!

TitillatedOcelot

Aethyr

TheEngineer

Damn I hope this comes on the 360 disc. This maps the best.

Facing Worlds ftw.

flukielukie

LittlestLamshi

jackal888

Madeira

Pezdispenser

I salute you Epic, and on this occassion, I salute you too, Sony. Let's turn back the tide and put VALUE back on the agenda.

No DLC unless it's free.

ErskinPig

CitizenInsane27

Might have to get UT3 now :D

QC8472

TheEngineer

steliosco

SigmundTheSeaMonster