So today bared witness to the release of the two single greatest acts of evil in the history of video games, and they were aptly titled “Street Fighter x Tekken” and “Mass Effect 3″. And I will be among the very few who won’t be playing them.

Both are games I was greatly looking forward to, both games came from companies who I harbored deep respect for in the past, both of which come from franchises that I absolutely adore, and both have disappointed and offended me in ways I never realized was possible.

If you keep up with gaming news, then you might have heard of the 12 DLC characters leaked for SFxT. They’re a great selection of characters, a few of which are my all-time favorites (Dudley and Elena), and they’re going to be available for purchase for $8 in packs of 4. Now, when people discovered some characters already on the disc, I didn’t think much of it. After all, Shuma-Gorath and Jill also had data on MvC3, but it was mere placeholder data, they were nowhere near complete. That was understandable. Of course, when I heard that some of the characters were discovered as completely playable and finished on the disc, well, that hurt. That was bad. There’s no excuse for that. Now imagine my surprise when literally all 12 characters are on the disc, completely finished and playable, inaccessible through any other means other than purchasing them through DLC unlocks.

That’s just evil. That is greed incarnate. That’s selling someone a chessboard with all the royalty taken out so they can buy them later. This is seriously the single most shameless thing I have seen in gaming history. Imagine if Capcom vs SNK 2 or Marvel vs Capcom 2 pulled that same shit back then. Here’s thirty characters, but all the good ones are locked up behind the cash slot. Don’t get me wrong, thirty characters is a lot, but CvSNK2 or MvC2 gave you everything they could from the get-go, all fifty characters to use either already unlocked or unlocked through gameplay. You can argue that CvSNK2 and MvC2 was mostly recycled sprites from existing games, but hell, so almost all of the Street Fighter characters in x Tekken are directly ripped from Street Fighter IV. People will also argue that Skullgirls and Blazblue do the very same thing, and while I’ll admit that Blazblue is just as guilty in this department, it’s quite clear that the Skullgirls team is still working diligently on those additional characters. They’re not finished, locked away in the game for you to purchase. And they’re not ripping from pre-existing games either, so they’re already putting in more work. This is just absolutely shameless.

And then there’s Mass Effect 3. Oh, Mass Effect, how I loved your universe, your characters. But everything I have seen tells me that you are intent on destroying everything I loved. Your DLC is ridiculous, your demo was lackluster, but your spoilers…GOD, I wish I could talk to you people about the spoilers. Let me just say that I deeply wish that these are all just some heavily doctored fakes and I’m silly for getting worked up over things that are just too stupid to be true. Because if these are true…then boy, am I looking forward to talking to you in the future about how bad it all is.

I don’t want to hate these games, I really don’t. I would love to buy these games and enjoy every moment of them. But when my lord and savior Kamiya of Platinum Games agrees that his former employer’s DLC plan is a scam and when Bioware drives a lovingly crafted universe into the ground, then there’s no way in hell I can ever support that. I’ve been in so many arguments over the last couple of days with rabid Capcom and Bioware defenders (I myself used to be one back in the day), each one ignoring any reason I give them and simply reminding me that they don’t care and will be happily spending their money regardless. I can’t understand that at all. Why aren’t more people angry about this? Why are people so content with developers clearly ripping them off right in front of them? I’m not saying they should bomb Metacritic with low scores and boycott everything they do, but DAMMIT, GET MAD.

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But uh, yeah! Hope you enjoyed that, uh, comic up there! See you Sunday!