Back when they were called “Expansion Packs” and came on a disc for players who didn’t have a good internet connection. You can trace the death of the expac and the rise of MTX in the postlaunch monetization of Bethesda’s biggest games - Morrowind through Skyrim all have entire extra games that you can graft onto them for a premium price, but then during Skyrim’s release and re-release era they dip their toes into MTX via the Creation Club, to their total embrace of the concept in FO76.
But actually I think that blaming Bethesda is a bit of a red herring. The real dawn of DLC as we know it today wasn’t horse armor, it was Halo 2’s additional multiplayer maps. Microsoft went from releasing maps for free to charging for early access to maps that became free eventually to making everyone buy the maps. At around the same time they forced Valve to charge for Left for Dead 2 maps that were released for free on PC. MS really took point on conditioning gamers to lower their expectations for post launch content.
Back when they were called “Expansion Packs” and came on a disc for players who didn’t have a good internet connection. You can trace the death of the expac and the rise of MTX in the postlaunch monetization of Bethesda’s biggest games - Morrowind through Skyrim all have entire extra games that you can graft onto them for a premium price, but then during Skyrim’s release and re-release era they dip their toes into MTX via the Creation Club, to their total embrace of the concept in FO76.
But actually I think that blaming Bethesda is a bit of a red herring. The real dawn of DLC as we know it today wasn’t horse armor, it was Halo 2’s additional multiplayer maps. Microsoft went from releasing maps for free to charging for early access to maps that became free eventually to making everyone buy the maps. At around the same time they forced Valve to charge for Left for Dead 2 maps that were released for free on PC. MS really took point on conditioning gamers to lower their expectations for post launch content.