Downloadable content (DLC) is common in modern-day video games,  often serving as a vital funding funnel for video game developers. The base price of games hasn't increased for many years, and DLC allows them to fund further development by tapping into a game's existing fanbase. With the prevalence of gaming subscription services, fewer people are buying games outright, making DLC may be one of the gaming industry's necessary evils.

While there are some positive examples, such as Bungie funding the "Zero Hour" Destiny 2 mission through microtransactions, DLC negatively affects some genres more than others -- genres like fighting games. DLC's prevalence in modern gaming killed one of the fighting games genre's most iconic moments: defeating hidden characters in battle for the right to unlock them on your roster.

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It's all a matter of the DLC's context. Bungie has a functioning DLC ecosystem, where the money made from current microtransactions is used to create future DLC. But buying new ornaments for your weapons is one thing; purchasing roster members is another thing entirely. Fighting games are a genre where skill and timing remain supreme, and buying characters instead of earning them subverts one of the things that makes fighting games great: the high skill barrier.

Nintendo's Super Smash Brothers Melee is a seminal entry in not only the franchise's history but a high point in the fighting/character brawler genre. One of the reasons for this was how the game forced you to play every aspect of the game to unlock the entire roster -- each character had a specific challenge that had to be completed. Once the challenge was met, you were confronted by a character for a single life, winner-takes-all match. If you won, the character was added to the roster. If you lost, you had to complete the challenge over for a chance to avenge your loss and add them to the active roster.

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Games Super Smash Bros Ultimate

For example, to unlock Dr. Mario, players had to beat the campaign with Mario without using any continues. Other players had harder challenges, like defeating stages under certain time restraints or playing 800 versus matches. Super Smash Brothers Brawl included similar challenges, but they seemed to be much easier than its predecessors. Roster expanding challenges like these forced players to learn how to learn multiple characters combo-list and increased their overall understanding of the game's core mechanics.

Mortal Kombat 11 has assembled one of the most iconic rosters in the history of fighting games, and they locked it behind a paywall. You don't have to play invested challenges or defeat them in battle -- all you have to do is enter your credit card information to unlock the entire roster. Can you imagine the feeling of defeating Arnold's Schwarzenegger's Terminator with Sub-Zero after falling to them in battle time after time? Severely sweaty boss battles come with a massive sense of accomplishment, something that feels missing. Characters like RoboCop, Spawn, and Jason Voorhees are pop-culture icons, and subverting any skill to unlock them seems shallow and incomplete. It feels like fighting game players are being robbed of memorable opportunities to earn some of the best characters that have ever graced fighting game rosters.

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