How to Do DLC the Right Way

DLC has had a bad reputation ever since horse armor, and plenty of it was earned. But the problem is not DLC. It is how a studio uses it.

I buy every DLC SCS puts out for American Truck Simulator. Every one, without thinking about it. I do not play Euro Truck Simulator 2, but it is the same studio doing the same thing, and the two of them are about as close to perfect as DLC gets.

What SCS gets right

ATS came out in 2016 and ETS2 in 2012. Both still get real updates: new lighting, new systems, reworked map areas, new trucks. Much of it is free for everyone who owns the base game. The two games share an engine, Prism3D, so when one gets an upgrade, the other usually gets it too. Multiplayer landed in both games in 2021, years after launch, and nobody paid for it.

The paid DLC is mostly new states, and they are big. Whole regions with new roads, cities, and landmarks. You drive through one and it is obvious where the money went. Nothing feels cut out of the base game to be sold back to you.

SCS also goes back and rebuilds old regions so they hold up next to the new ones. California, one of the original base-game states, was rebuilt from the ground up over several years and shipped as a free update. You bought it once and it keeps getting better.

They let you mod the game too, with Steam Workshop support built in. Trucks, trailers, sounds, whole map expansions. SCS could have locked that down to protect DLC sales, and they did not. I still pay for the official maps to support the people doing the work, but mods are there as a temporary fix when I want something SCS has not gotten to yet.

And if you are not buying on day one, you do not have to. Older maps go on sale all the time, especially when a new one drops, so you can fill in the map around it for less.

Owning everything costs real money. I know, because I own everything. I have never felt squeezed, because every purchase is clearly more game.

Not everyone does it this way

Some games do not do DLC right, and it is not hard to find out which ones. Open the store page and scroll. If the add-on list is longer than the list of things the base game does, you already know.

I am not going to name names. You can find them yourself in about thirty seconds, which is kind of the point.

The rules, as I see them

Strip away the trucks and SCS is following a handful of simple rules:

• Paid DLC is more game. Not something cut out of the base game and sold back to you.
• What people already own keeps getting better. Updates, reworks, and engine upgrades go to everyone, for free.
• Mods are welcome. Players filling gaps is not a threat to your sales.
• Latecomers can catch up. Older content gets cheaper over time instead of staying full price forever.

If you want it in one line: would the base game still feel complete without the DLC? If yes, you are selling more game. If no, you are selling back what you took out.

Why this matters to me

I make games and have to run a viable business. We have not released any DLC, but we are a small company and I am not opposed to it. DLC is one of the few ways a small studio keeps the lights on after launch. The question is not whether to sell more content. It is how to do it without burning the people who already paid you.

SCS understood that trust compounds. People who feel treated well buy the next expansion without thinking twice, tell their friends, and are still playing a decade later. That is the version of DLC I want to make.

I am the proof it works.