Hey all,

I just recently bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the 360, and I've been having a hellofa lot of fun playing online. I heard there were a number of map packs for the game, and I was thinking of buying one or two of them. I went into the online store and found out that all seven map packs were free. This added more than 4 times the intial content with new maps and new vehicles, etc.

Why the hell is all of this amazing content free? I am completely blown away and shocked by how awesome it is for EA to give this content away for free. There's a nice amount of new vehicles and a lot of new maps for the different multiplayer scenarios...

... And I payed $10 for three stupid maps in Halo Reach... lol. Dice and EA are made of absolute win. In other news, I feel molested by Bungie for the ripoff map pack I bought for Reach. I also know that Activision is going to charge a bit of a sum on their map packs for Black Ops. It seems standard, really. An annoying way to money-grub your customers, but standard. And then here's Dice and EA acting like they're Divine, Holy figures giving us amazingly kickass content for free. And I do worship them as Holy figures now, so I guess it worked! Those tricky bastards! I love them.

My big question is why though? Why was all of this content for free? And why is it only EA doing this while everyone else charges us so much extra for the content?

I don't understand why this is so shocking to you. This is how it should be, and how it has been on the PC for ages, up until recently. Only idiots pay for maps. I remember that expansions for $30 were annihilated because they did not add anything special, yet they added FAR more content than you can get with 3 DLCs worth $10 each.

To answer your question more directly, this is a return to the norm that clueless people ruined in the first place.

As to why, because I think DICE realized that they will get a lot more legit PC support if they did things the PC way not the console way, that is maps that aren't paid for. On that note, the other choice they had was make console owners pay up, or have them bitch because they suddenly have to pay for something others get for free.

So they give the content free for PC owners because it's expected to be free, and then they give console owners the content for free in order to treat them equally to PC owners. That makes sense!

Also, I've never been a big PC guy, and XBL is all I've seen in terms of downloading games, expansions, and DLC. I'm used to seeing huge numbers by every product. It's nice to see the other side of things with EA and Dice. =)

They added 2 free maps: But the rest are alternations, I liked it tho because it keep me coming back for more.

For PS3 they were added automatically via Patches. 

Realiostically how it actually used to wokr is that just about all games could be modded, so that you got free maps from the actual community. SOmetimes there would be a developer release, but not always. The consoles are closed and only half a PC so they don't have that. In fact companies don't want that on the consoles because then they CAN charge you for shit that the community can crap out in 7 days' work for free. Battlefield 2 had mod tools available, BC2 didn't due to some shit reason DICE said. I am wondering if BF3 will have mods or not now.

No mod tools upon release.

DICE themselves said that, something about Frostbite 2 being too complex.

that is an cover up excuse. EA would of said No mod kits, because that impacts DLC revenue. 

Too complex isn't an excuse, an modder are Uni students and hobbist that learn and learn game engines and how to do it, even if it was too hard they will learn it over time. But really EA could of had mod kits and DLC wouldn't of been affected because people would buy the DLC becuase they are  1. Would be high quality, 2. on public servers 3. always have players to play on them. 

because this is how it should be

That's the shit reason they didn't realease BC2 mod tools too. It was bullshit than and it is still bullshit now.

But the DLC was free in the first place, I don't see what revenue mods would impact :P