EA once locked nudity behind DLC in The Saboteur. Here’s how “The Midnight Show” turned digital nudity into a weapon against used games.
In 2009, Electronic Arts discovered a form of downloadable content even stranger than horse armor: breasts that only appeared after entering a code. The Saboteur shipped with violence, Nazi-occupied Paris and an Irishman capable of scaling buildings like a drunken Ezio Auditore. Female bodies, however, were apparently premium material.
The resulting controversy made “The Midnight Show” one of gaming’s most shameless early experiments in turning sex—and curiosity—into a weapon against used copies.
Welcome to Paris. Please Enter Your Code
Developed by Pandemic Studios, The Saboteur followed race-car mechanic Sean Devlin as he joined the French Resistance. Its occupied neighborhoods appeared largely in black and white, interrupted by red Nazi banners, blood and explosions. Liberating an area restored its color, giving an otherwise familiar open-world action game a striking identity.
Sean operated from the Belle de Nuit, a Parisian cabaret populated by dancers wearing strategically placed pasties. Players who wanted those pasties removed needed “The Midnight Show,” a day-one DLC pack advertised from inside the game itself.
Activating it unlocked a nudity toggle that made the cabaret’s dancers topless. EA did throw in enough extras to call it a content pack: a hidden VIP room beneath the Belle, suggestive cinematics, a gambling minigame with contraband and a special car among its prizes, plus five additional hiding locations around Paris.
Still, nobody spent the next decade calling it “the extra hiding-spot DLC.”
Free—If You Bought the Correct Copy
Technically, EA did not charge every player to see nudity. New Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 copies included a single-use download code, while the PC version contained the material without requiring a separate download. The catch appeared when somebody bought the game pre-owned, rented it or borrowed a copy whose code had already been redeemed.
Early reports placed the standalone pack at $5, although EA’s launch announcement ultimately listed it for $2.99 on PlayStation Network and 240 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. Either way, the message was wonderfully unsubtle: buy new and receive nudity; buy used and pay the breast tax.
That made “The Midnight Show” less of an expansion than an early attack on the secondhand market. EA earned nothing when a retailer resold a game, but a disposable code gave the publisher something it could withhold from the next owner. The strategy foreshadowed the company’s later Online Pass era, when used buyers regularly found multiplayer modes or bonus content waiting behind another payment.
The Sexiest Form of DRM
EA presented the download as a way for players to choose the game’s level of maturity. That argument might have sounded more convincing if the choice had simply been available in the options menu. Instead, the nudity switch was visible but disabled—an invitation to complete the transaction.
The episode also became an undignified footnote to Pandemic Studios’ final game. EA closed the developer only weeks before The Saboteur reached stores, leaving behind a stylish, flawed swan song that deserved to be remembered for turning occupied Paris from monochrome into color.
Instead, its most durable legacy may be the moment a major publisher looked at digital breasts and saw an anti-resale strategy.