14 DAY TRIAL // Since Microsoft launched their Xbox Live service, add-ons/official mods became another way of making gamers reach deeper into their pockets. Thus, the move caught other companies' attention and they did the same with their products. Before we knew it, any content whatsoever, added after a title's release, had to be charged. Valve however, has a different policy: "You buy the product, you get the content."
Robin Walker sees things differently with their service (Steam) and makes a confident and sincere statement of how the company makes its money: "We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers", said the designer of Team Fortress 2. "You buy the product, you get the content."
However, as MegaGames reports, Valve is not giving away free additional content for charity: "Our philosophy there is, if you buy the product, we put more content out to keep the game interesting, we sell more products", said Valve's marketing director Doug Lombardi.
"[In multiplayer games] the content you're playing is being created by the players you're playing against, so the more people that get into the game, the more content you're going to have," Valve's Charlie Brown concurred.
Reasonable enough, but then why do others charge for their additional content? Bethesda Softworks even charged their users for a better horse, in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The thing is, Valve aren't exactly saints themselves. I mean, yeah, it's true that they don't charge for additional content, but they did something different to bring them the same results, better even: they divided Half Life 2 into episodes. Each is sold separately. How about that? Don't tell me that they're two different games.
Anyway, I don't even know why they had to explain themselves. They do a pretty good job with Half Life, the servers and everything, so I'd say they deserve their earnings. Why would they be the fools giving away free content? Let some other developer start that trend.