Media Molecule says latest LBP patch is nothing but DLC

By Joe Fourhman | July 9, 2009

I don’t even know if this is an actual revelation, but it was the first time I saw this so I thought I’d bring it up. Media Molecule’s latest Twitter update admits that the DLC packs are stashed inside those almost-random LittleBigPlanet updates that show up every so often.

LBP patch 1.16 “Caboc” which came out today was data only includes upcoming DLC assets for next few months (no features in this one peeps!)

Is this already common knowledge? I have speculated about this on several podcasts, but I had never seen it publicly verified until now.

It has always seemed a little incongruous to me that gamers have lambasted some games for doing this, but LBP seems to have sidestepped any criticism. Maybe that’s just a sign of the changing times that now we’re sort of okay with a game secretly holding all of the bits of content, but requiring a purchase to unlock it. Maybe we’re more fine with content showing up as a forced download, then having the content on the disk? Beautiful Katamari was among the games that took lumps for having on-disk content locked up (I’m sure you can name more), so maybe it’s also a question of how much content is available or how good the content is?

Either way – whether you regularly buy any LBP DLC or not – you already have it all on your drive. Even that rare Crown!

For the record, I have no objection to MM running things like this. I don’t know how else you would do it… because it would be a right pain to be blocked from playing a community level because you neglected to buy the Killzone pack, or to have to suffer some kind of weird loading screen while the game grabs the Buzz stickers you did not purchase. But I do wonder about people who are vehemently against buying any DLC, because their HDs are slowly filling with LBP updates anyway.