Wednesday, March 4, 2015

The RS DLC Scandal

The promises...

The music video game Rocksmith 2014 was announced as a replacement of the original Rocksmith (RS1), rather than a sequel*. In order to convince RS1-owners to upgrade to the all-new RS2014 version it was - and still is - stated, that previously purchased Rocksmith Downloadable Content ("DLC", additional songs), will be transferable without a re-purchase. Same was to be true for the 52 songs on the RS1-disc, which would be available via Import-tool for a comparatively small relicensing fee.

When the game was released for the next-gen consoles (XBox One and PS4), similar promises were made for the upgrade from the previous console generation to the new one. In other words, DLC purchased for Rocksmith 2014 on PS3 would be easily transferable to the PS4-version of the game, without additional charge (same was to be true for the XBox 360 and XBox One).

Screenshot from FAQ on the RS2014 homepage as of March 4th, 2015

Naturally, at least on Amazon.co.uk, these possibilities are (still) advertised as a main feature.

Screenshot from the amazon.co.uk product description of the Rocksmith 2014 PS4 game as of March 4th, 2015

...that were not kept.

In a few days the release of the PS4-version of the game will be 4 months ago (it was on Nov. 4th / 7th, 2014). While the so-called legacy DLC (so songs that were released prior to the current generation version of Rocksmith 2014) had been added for the the American PlayStation Store and the global XBox Store over the course of a couple of weeks, European PS4-customers can still only download a small portion of the promised legacy DLC. The reason for this regional deviation is that the company responsible for the EU PSN Store is SCEE (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe), whose processes and schedules differ from the counterparts SCEA (US), SCEI (Japan) & SCEK (Korea).

For an overview of which songs should be available, but are not, head over to the Ubisoft Forums, where DJPelle keeps a detailed and always up-to-date list of the missing and available content. The entity of persisting issues is tracked here by R2_.

While that alone might not sound too dramatic, there are a couple of aspects that worsen the matter considerably:
  • While new customers might merely feel bored by the more narrow song library and treated unfairly compared to US-customers, for some customers the issue is, that much of the missing content has already been paid for on a previous generation.
  • Customers that try to inquire about the missing content run into a customer service brick wall of standardised or even automated answers that merely try to put them off. Also, Sony employees refer them to the Ubisoft customer support, stating that it was a publisher related problem, while them on the other hand refer them back to Sony. Oftentimes they do not get an answer at all. 
  • Official PlayStation bloggers and tweeters, or any other public representatives remain completely silent regarding this matter and simply ignore the increasing number of questions that their customers are raising regarding this issue.
  • The only statement available to customers comes from the Rocksmith 2014 ComDev D. Amrich, stating that "SCEE is adding legacy DLC as their schedule allows. It appears there is a different workflow in SCEE than at SCEA, Microsoft, or Steam. Keep an eye on the PlayStation Blog in the EU on Wednesdays to see what has been added to the EU PS Store. That is where tracks from the back catalog are posted when they are made available." With the amount of games and content currently released for PS4, that is very alarming "timeline". Considering SCEE's communication policy on the matter one might easily jump to the conclusion that their schedule will never allow the addition of RS2014 legacy DLC.
  • In addition to the lack of legacy DLC, there has been a multitude of labeling and referencing issues with Rocksmith 2014 DLC in the European PSN Store. We will not be going into detail on these issues for now, but they did put the put a bad light on the quality of SCEE store maintenance.


What to do?

We, the disgruntled customers, are currently trying to unite in order to force SCEE to gives us a statement and a timeline on this matter. Since they have failed to do so in private Customer Service inquiries, we use the public stage to create awareness and bad publicity.

Here is where we are organising ourselves:
  • Ubisoft Forums: In this thread, RS2014 ComDev Dan provides us with anything he knows about upcoming uploads and issues. We, the users, provide him with information about (un)known issues, comment and discuss the latest news on the matter and think about how to get SCEE to deliver the promised DLC.
  • PlayStation EU Forums: We have recently moved our complaints to the EU PS forums. As opposed to Ubisoft's Community Devs, Sony representatives have not been communicative at all, at least regarding this issue. Therefore we do not expect a statement anytime soon. The aim is, nevertheless, to make this thread one of the most upvoted and commented threads on the board in order to catch their attention. Support there would be extremely valuable!
  • Twitter: We are also trying to promote the matter on Twitter via the hashtag #RSDLCScandal. Not much traffic as of now, so be sure to tweet away towards the official Sony account, using this hashtag.
  • PlayStation EU Blog: Every Wednesday, SCEE announces what they have put up in the PSN-Store. Posts are usually published in the afternoon. Some of us try to get one of the earliest comments on the recently published post and all the others upvote and add their comment to the earliest post (do not distribute on to several comments, but concentrate on the earliest one we got!). That already worked quite nicely last week, and Sony openly ignored the maybe most upvoted comment I have ever seen on the blog.
  • This Blog: I created this Blog as an information HUB for your reference. Link it if you want to promote our cause, and let me know about anything worth putting up that is still missing. I'll try to update it with the latest news on the matter.

1 comment:

  1. Update:
    PlayStation EU Forums: We have recently moved our complaints to the EU PS forums (http://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/PSN-Support/Rocksmith-2014-DLC-problems/m-p/23118256). As opposed to Ubisoft's Community Devs, Sony representatives have not been communicative at all, at least regarding this issue. Therefore we do not expect a statement anytime soon. The aim is, nevertheless, to make this thread one of the most upvoted and commented threads on the board in order to catch their attention. Support there would be extremely valuable!

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