I was going to buy Battlefield: Bad Company 2 tomorrow, but I’ll be making other arrangements, now.

JB Hi-Fi usually does this thing where it charges an actual plausible price for new release games, $79, on the day they come out. Then it increases the price to the farcical $99 or higher price that the game distributors think Australians should be paying. I’d sooner go without than be gouged that much. The point of this is that it encourages me to go out and buy the game on the very limited early reviews, rather than waiting around and considering how the title is going down before laying down my hard-earned.

In the case of BF:BC2, JB is selling only the “Limited Edition”, and at $99 (which is still $10 cheaper than the nearest rival at Eastland). And what “extras” do you get in this “Limited Edition”? You get some guns and armour. That’s right, you’re paying $20 extra for basic content that’s on the disk – ie, if you buy the normal edition at the somewhat reasonable (but still inflated in Australia) price, you’re having content deliberately locked away from you.

Dear publishers, distributors, everyone responsible for this system – get stuffed. I won’t be buying the game at all at this rate – or, at most, I’ll be importing it from Play Asia for about $70. Unless the game is truly spectacular, I may well just go without. I’ll certainly be waiting to see what everyone else thinks of it, on reflection – it might not be worth buying at all.

What’s even stupider about this is that EA is trying to get the Bad Company 2 set up as a competitive rival to COD:MW2. And the way it starts that is by gouging Australian customers on the first day?

I haven’t, by the way, heard that EA is implementing a local match filter for BC, either – the biggest problem with the COD series in Australia will just be repeated with EA’s effort.

No, I’m not sold. Screw ‘em.