So I guess the moral of the story is: don't buy (downloadable content on) a closed platform.

As if people will listen. :< Their compliance with this sytem hurts every gamer in the long run.

I'm not sure they see such a feature as being worth the effort, though it would be nice if they did.

When it comes to paranoid IP behaviors that may require some serious work. As I understand it, IP holders are actually under some legal pressure to defend their copyrights, and that not defending it can cause someone to loss their claim to something. I'm not sure why things need to be structured in that way as it sort of encourages some rather aggressive, and destructive behaviors. I'm sure we have all heard various stories about the big guy crushing the little guy over something stupid.

I think there should be a new Rule for DLC

If you release DLC for your game at a later point, no matter how big or small it is - you have to re-release a new version for your game with all the DLC, included in that new version

This generation is a complete disaster in terms of DLC, in time when all servers go down and time passes - when you pick up a game from this generation, a lot of them will be only "half-complete" and you will not be able to do anything about it

The online capabilities of consoles this generation has made Developers and Publishers extremely lazy and incompetent, they have a mentality of "Release now, patch it later"

Who cares that the real Ending to Fallout 3 or Prince of Persia (2008) was taken out of the game? We will sell it to those suckers as "DLC"

Who cares that we release games with Game-breaking bugs that make the game unplayable? We will patch it

As long as the majority remain ignorant and complacent then I think it would take another crash in the market to change its current direction. All we can do is support the more positive companies (like CDP, Paradox and most indies) and at least maintain something there for those of us who don't like the idea of an increasingly Orwellian market.

It logical but a lot of gamers just want convent easy, reliable gameage. Those close platforms really do provide a fun ride for many people. I'm fairly vocal about what I will and will not buy when it comes to my PC, but I do things on a console that would appear to violate my standards. I'm not even entirely sure why. Perhaps points don't feel like real money, or maybe I just know what I'm getting into and what I have to trade for what I get.

That being said I think its fair for people to start sending Microsoft and Sony emails asking what happens to all their downloaded games and DLC addons in 5-10 years. Unfortunately I think something nasty is going to happen before they start requiring games be made to last. And I don't just mean getting old content, I mean people should be able to play on-line after a console dies.

Maybe, but at least at first glance it looks like the DLC is hosted on XBLA:

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/The-Saboteur/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024541088f?DownloadType=GameAddon#LiveZone

I believe content which is hosted on EA's own servers is typically acquired through some in-game storefront and doesn't appear separately on Xbox Live. I could be wrong, though.

I, for one, am going to go back to getting physical copies of games whenever I can, before they dry up. What fun it will be when companies decide to do digital only and completely eliminate physical copies, and then everything starts falling apart.

I admit, I'm one of those weirdos not really into dlc; I play a game how I buy it. I'm not interested in buying extras. On a similar note, I never got into WoW because of the "Buy this game, and then pay monthly to play it" approach, which boggles my mind. But I realize I'm going off here, so I'll shut up.

Of course, but when the product is art I think companies have a responsibility to allow access.

Games are also a product of culture/art. Just think about if all books from the last centauries were destroyed instead of kept. What would we know about the world then?

It's so easy to provide the DLC as a free download and give it to some file hoster or to google or to an internet archive. Obviously they are not interested in making money anymore, so I would actually force them to either support it or make it free. This way the benefit for all is maximized.

Just my opinion.

But is it right do demand this responsibility of private companies? Should not the preservation of art lie with the public?

We all knew this was going to happen at one time or another, and we know it's not going to be the last time it happens. As tormentfan says, what EA has committed is theft in both the legal and moral sense of the word, but as long as everybody just puts up with what companies like EA do, nothing is going to change.

Part of the problem was that the majority of people who bought the DLC had no real technical knowledge. Many of them rely on the plug-and-play principle of consoles for no other reason than they simply don't know how the internet or a computer works. I have several friends and family members who buy DRM'd DLC in the mistaken belief that the connection to the DLC server will never go down.

As Navigon says, it's this ignorance that is going to cause the next (and by now, inevitable) game market crash.

Anyone know how this affects the PS3 version by the way? I don't buy DLC, but to the best of my knowledge, all DLC gets downloaded and authenticated directly through Sony...

How can the public preserve it when the companies deny continued access? And I do think culture takes precedence over copyright.

In Germany (and probably the US also) you have to give away several "reserved copies" of each book published. They go in several pulic libraries as well as the german national archive. Something like this should be done with games.