I've bitched about this before, as has Psycho Gorilla, but there was a time not too long ago when game developers—and I don't mean just independent devs, but mainstream ones as well—would often create post-release content for their games and make it available online for free. It was a sort of thank you to the people who bought their games and a way to extend the life of the product without relying on tacked-on multiplayer modes or charging people—the same people who were kind enough to buy the game in the first place—for superfluous content that was held back specifically so that it could be sold on top of the initial $60 cost of the game.

If you are unfortunate enough to have not lived through this time, just know that this is how map packs were once disseminated before Microsoft and Activision discovered that they could charge you $10 for them.

Some companies still get this right, however. Valve, despite our differences, has been very good at supporting their games with new content. Yeah, they'll charge you for hats and other items in Team Fortress 2, but there's nothing that you can't potentially get for free if you play the game for long enough. Every public item that I'm aware of can be found or crafted if you're patient enough. Gabe the Hutt simply knows that many of us are too hopped up on Sugar Smacks to do things the hard way, and that's how he makes his billions of dollars from digital clothing.

The people at Supergiant Games are another such group that has embraced the old ways, as they're offering the first piece of DLC for Bastion—a new campaign sequence titled "The Stranger's Dream"—free of charge. It'll be out on December 14, and you can find all other details on SG's website. I should mention, however, that the "free" part is only applicable to those who own the PC version of Bastion. People who were stupid enough to buy it on Xbox Live Arcade will have to pay ~$1 (80 Microsoft Points) for the content because of Microsoft's policy on the matter. Hey, look, there's Microsoft being dicks about DLC again.

It shouldn't even be necessary to include that last disclaimer, but Microsoft really likes being told to screw off. I'm not even going to mention information exclusively relevant to Xbox 360 owners anymore because if that's your primary gaming platform you don't deserve to read my words. There's a good reason why the Xbox 360 is associated with the absolute worst members of the gaming community: all of the stereotypes are true. I also hold Microsoft responsible for most of the worst shit of the last decade, including (but not limited to) charging an access fee to play non-persistent world games (i. e. anything other than MMOs) online, Games for Windows Live, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the holocaust. Not the Jewish holocaust, though. That's just how I refer to this one really bad day when I ran out of milk and the cashier at the grocery store didn't wish me a good day. In Canada that's an offence punishable by up to thirty life sentences in prison. It would be death, but a Canadian hasn't intentionally killed another living creature since 1867, and we weren't even an actual country at the time. In fact, that event was the reason we signed the Constitution Act. We were simply tired of the British making people angry enough to kill.

Via IndieGames.com