L4D: Crash Course DLC free for PC, but not for 360

It seems that the upcoming Left 4 Dead DLC pack, Crash Course, will be completely free on PC, but will not be on the Xbox360. Apparently, Valve wanted the content to be free on the Xbox360 as well but were forced into putting a price on it because of Microsoft. Chet Faliszek from Valve gave some reasoning behind it with the following statement: “We own our platform, Steam. Microsoft owns their platform. They wanted to make sure there’s an economy of value there.” Chet went on to say that while other developers are allowed to release some free DLC for the Xbox360, it wouldn’t be fair to other publishers if Valve were allowed the leeway to release all of their DLC free of charge. The Crash Course DLC pack will be priced at $7 (approximately R50) or 560 Microsoft Points, and it will add an entirely new campaign to the game.

However this is where the controversy starts. See, consumers (specifically Xbox360 owners) argue that the Xbox360 version of the game costs a fair deal more than the PC version, yet they’re still required to purchase the DLC packs, which are completely free on PC. It’s easy to relate to and understand their point of view regarding this, as they hope that Microsoft would see eye-to-eye with Valve’s reasoning for free content, as free content generally increases both the popularity of a game as well as the community playing it. It’s beneficial to both the consumers and Valve, as they increase their sales and game popularity while the consumers get to feel as though their money was well spent and they ultimately become more involved in the game and its community. On the contrary, looking at it from Microsoft’s perspective, a massive influx of free content might just prevent some gamers from purchasing newer titles, since they’re getting a lot more than their money’s worth with all the free content, and might just end up taking free DLC for granted, i.e expecting more of it more frequently. So that leaves us clashing here, but in the end, from a purely business perspective, Microsoft do make sense, but it still can be quite disheartening for Xbox360 owners.

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