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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2598 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 5, 2026

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Pedantry warning.

Sometimes game developers will release a full game, then a few months later release a few additional missions or scenarios sold separately from the base game. For decades, the standard term for such content was "expansion pack" or "mission pack". If the expansion pack can be played without having previously bought the base game, it would be referred to as a "standalone expansion/mission pack".

At some point in the 2010s (?), around the time that physical media began being phased out in favour of digital releases, "expansion/mission pack" was deprecated in favour of the new term "downloadable content (DLC)".

This term is stupid.

Any PC game purchased via Steam or similar digital storefronts will be downloaded to the user's PC: it is entirely accurate to describe any base game as "downloadable content" by virtue of it being content which one can download. Likewise games purchased via the PlayStation Store. Even if you buy a game in a DVD case from a brick-and-mortar shop, it often just contains a slip of paper with a download key.

"DLC" is an idiotic term to replace a perfectly descriptive and useful one. The only kind of video game content which can't be accurately described as "downloadable content" is video games released via physical media (discs, cartridges etc.). Bring back "expansion packs".

I'll cheekily play ball. If you're being this pedantic then you must also admit that the term DLC is still accurate, and furthermore some expansion packs repackage or compress the game files in such a way that actually shrinks it, I think Phantom Liberty and Blood & Wine are known for this, so the term Expansion Pack is not purely descriptive as there is compression instead of expansion. Would you insist on a different term for the few expansion/DLC sets that accomplish this paradox?

No one measures how much they're willing to spend on a video game (or additional content for a game) based on how many kilobytes it takes up. The classic metric is "hours of gameplay", which is imprecise and prone to Goodharting but still more illuminating than size on disc. If content purchased separately from the base game adds extra gameplay time, then it's an expansion pack, even if it entails a refactoring of the base game's code such that its size on disc is smaller. If purchasing an expansion pack actually removed hours of gameplay from the base game, I would concede the point that this can no longer be called an expansion pack, but to the best of my knowledge this has never happened.

you must also admit that the term DLC is still accurate

My point was not that the term "DLC" is inaccurate: it was that it isn't dispositive, and that it replaced a perfectly good term which was.

If purchasing an expansion pack actually removed hours of gameplay from the base game, I would concede the point that this can no longer be called an expansion pack, but to the best of my knowledge this has never happened.

Lots of games have DLCs explicitly meant to make the game easier and therefore faster to complete.

If they are different difficulty modes, then these expansion packs give the player the option of making the game easier and faster to complete. I'm talking about a hypothetical expansion pack which, upon installation, immediately removes five missions from the base campaign.

I of course agree that there has been a large and recent shift of midwits replacing good specific terms with bad vague terms (Space, content, partner, etc). In the spirit of pedantry many expansion packs decrease the Speedrun time for a given game (Elden Ring, others), for typical gameplay, I'm quite certain that almost all recent World of Warcraft expansions (which almost nobody calls DLC, ironically) have decreased the time it takes to reach max level and play the endgame than the original game - but I would concede that decoupling the "expansion" from the world-wide overhauls and patches that come out simultaneously are difficult to decouple.

These are fair points. Typically, when I read a claim that a game contains "20 hours of gameplay", I interpret that to mean "the average player on their first playthrough will take 20 hours to complete the main quest and all the sidequests". It would be churlish to claim that e.g. Half-Life "only" contains half an hour of gameplay, even though it can be beaten in that time. While expansions which change the base game's mechanics in such a way as to facilitate speedrunning could technically be said to have "contracted" the game, speedrunners are such a noncentral example of players that they hardly seem relevant.

You are absolutely correct.

Please contact Gabe Newell and inform him.

I agree. Unlike most idealistic proposals (like ENIAC keyboards), I assume most people know what "expansion pack" means, so we can use it in real conversation.

Small "DLC" like cosmetics aren't expansion packs, but we have a word for those too, with a more accurate connotation: "microtransactions".

Even if you buy a PS5 game in a DVD case from a brick-and-mortar shop, it just contains a slip of paper with a download key.

Not always: it was recently a big news headline that Sony plans to end physical disk production in 2028. Personally, I don't think it matters, because the underlying problem that everyone (rightly) points out does matter, not owning your games, is separate (you can buy a physical disk and lose access to the game, and you can freeze and hack a digital game to keep access; it may be symbolic, but symbolism is vastly overrated).

Not always: it was recently a big news headline that Sony plans to end physical disk production in 2028.

Are we disagreeing? In the OP I said that even if you buy a game that comes in a DVD case, it usually contains no disc and just a slip of paper with a download key on it.

Since they plan to end in 2028, they must be producing some physical disks today.

Oh, I see what you mean. Using PS5 games was a bad example, I'll amend.

“DLC” took off in the Xbox Live era, once consoles all had Internet connections. It was suddenly much more practical to sell things for prices which would never merit a physical printing. The term was perfectly reasonable until digital distribution of entire games became common.

You're not wrong, but like all renamings and reformattings it was done to evade accumulated expectations about what an "expansion pack" should be. Like when Starbucks used "tall" instead of "large" for their coffees, or the shift to Nespresso pods.

Like when Starbucks used "tall" instead of "large" for their coffees

Doesn't it go "tall – grande – venti" for "small – medium – large"?

SEE?? That's how confusing it is! What geniuses they were, amirite?

...and not at all evidence I don't go to Starbucks very much and got this from Freakonomics two decades ago.

/Me salutes you with your trenta cold foam cold brew no sprinkles with my own short whole milk cortado.

"DLC" and "expansion pack" are not synonyms. Rather, "DLC" encompasses all optional add-ons, while "expansion pack" is reserved specifically for major optional add-ons.

Victoria 2 and Victoria 3 are good examples.

  • Victoria 2's DLCs are easily divided into two categories. The two expansions, A House Divided and Heart of Darkness, were major, linear upgrades to the game—you can play V2, V2 + AHD, or V2 + AHD + HoD. Additionally, there were several cosmetic, non-expansion-pack DLCs, mostly "sprite packs"—e. g., American Civil War Sprite Pack—plus a music pack.

  • Victoria 3 currently has a smorgasbord of DLCs. They are marketed with several different names, from "music packs" and "art packs" at the minor, purely cosmetic end to "immersion packs", "mechanics packs", and "expansions" at the high end.

Likewise, for The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, the infamous Horse Armor Pack was merely a minor DLC, while Shivering Isles was an actual expansion.

Also, you didn't ask a question.

Also, you didn't ask a question.

Surely there was an implied "why the hell did they think this was a good idea?" undergirding the entire post.

I wish they'd used a more descriptive term like "additional content" or "extra content". "Downloadable content" is just stupid.

It's also just an awkward fit. There's been several cases where the 'downloadable content' was just an unlock code for part of the game that was physically on the disc but not available to players, with the Protean character from Mass Effect 3 being an early and high-profile example. And these days you run into the problem the other direction: ARK has been dumping a ton of downloadable content that's free-as-in-beer, but charging for parts of the gameplay instead. If you want to get your ass eaten by a pyromane, the free Ragnarok map has that coming as a default. If you want to actually tame the pyromane, though, you gotta shell out five bucks, and you won't get the notice until the tame fails, either.

I'm not that opposed to paid cosmetics, and from a pure gameplay perspective the current balance is roughly better for the consumer in general. Ragnarok is easily a 100+ hours play if you like ARK at all (admittedly, a big caveat), while the Pyromane is kinda a gimmick tame that's more annoying than useful. I think the drakelings are worse, but they're still not that bad compared to the rest of the balance mess that is ARK. But it still feels like a really bad equilibrium that we fell into, rather than a good result we're happy with. At minimum, even the best-case situations like FFXIV have had friction between the paid cosmetic sphere and the modding community, and most cases drift from that promise pretty fast.

If you want to actually tame the pyromane, though, you gotta shell out five bucks, and you won't get the notice until the tame fails, either.

I get annoyed at a door I can't walk through without shelling out money. I'd probably uninstall the game if that happened to me.

Expansion packs also used to have a substantial amount of additional content for that price, whereas modern stuff is shamelessly drip-fed out at an astonishing unit price.

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