Almost twenty years on, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's Horse Armor DLC remains one of gaming's most notorious controversies. It was known for being the first cosmetic DLC, with players up in arms at the lofty price of $2.50 for an item in a single-player game.
A murder mystery whodunit turned into a youdunit.
With the controversy now well in the rearview window, and cosmetic DLC a huge staple of the gaming landscape, Oblivion system designer and Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith has been reflecting on that period in April 2006.
Speaking to VideoGamer, Nesmith said the team wanted to start with "something small," something the developer seemingly regrets. “Only in hindsight could it be seen that that’s not what people wanted and that we basically thumbed our nose at them without realizing it," he said.
The reaction to the DLC was overwhelmingly negative, something Nesmith says the team didn't expect, “Both Bethesda and Microsoft were caught flat-footed at the response to it, [we] did not anticipate that at all.”
“It must have been in the millions, it had to be millions,”
But the negative sentiment didn't have too much of an adverse reaction. In 2016, Todd Howard...
