It’s not even out yet, but the spiritual successor to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in Koji Igarashi’s Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, has already had its first DLC announced. When the game hits PC, Nintendo Switch, PlaySTation 4 and Xbox One next month, players will have a $10 DLC waiting for them.
Following that, according to the newly-launched official site, Bloodstained will be receiving new characters, modes and cosmetics as free post-launch updates. The free updates to the side-scrolling action-adventure game will specifically include a speedrun mode, a boss rush mode, online and local co-op play, a “roguelike mode” and two extra playable characters.
As for that DLC, entitled “Iga’s Back Pack”, players will be able to fight Igarashi himself and earn the “powerful Swordwhip weapon” for defeating him. Initially promised as an exclusive for those that backed the Kickstarter campaign, Igarashi himself announced on the game’s Kickstarter site that the DLC would be available to all.
“We also asked the community a while back if they were against us making the ‘backer exclusive’ content (Iga Boss and Swordwhip) available to all players in some fashion. Almost 30,000 of you replied and the overwhelming response was that in general you were okay with it, and the most popular option was to sell it at a price that would respect the purchase the backers originally made,” he said.
While part of the decision came down to “making money”, the main reason was to ensure “everyone had a safe and legitimate way to get the full game experience”, and to minimize piracy. “As someone who’s pirated games because of bull**** anti-consumer practices, or as a demo to try and then buy (something largely made obsolete by modern refund systems), I wanted to eliminate as many reasons to pirate Bloodstained as possible. I understand that not everyone will be 100% happy with this decision, but hopefully this helps in understanding the reasoning behind it. And of course all backers entitled to this content will receive the DLC for free.”
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will be available June 18th for PlayStation 4, PC and Xbox One, with the Nintendo Switch version coming on June 25th.