I realize that the left tends to be more passionate about things, and uses their feelings to judge things, but it doesn't really serve society well.

Sorry, but that trait is not in any way particular to lefties. The right is every bit as guilty.

Confirmation of "could" does not equal speculation of "did". This is a pretty big deal.

Don't be a sore loser, kid.

Occasionally? Yes. Routinely? No. If you want to accuse me of lying, feel free to further embarrass yourself by trying (and inevitably failing) to show that free content was anywhere near as common as paid expansions.

Really? I don't remember anyone being upset with expansions, back in the day.

Then you either weren't paying attention or have forgotten to remove your rose-tinted glasses. Every time an expansion was announced, "everybody knew" that the publisher had deliberately made all this stuff along with the original game but withheld it so they could sell it separately later. It was all a big plot to make us pay half again what we "should" for our games. They were con artists who were stealing our money. And so on. It was bullshit then and it's bullshit now. Game publishers do shady things sometimes, but the existence of extra paid content isn't one of them, regardless of whether you buy it as a disc or as a download.

You got a shit-ton of additional content (practically an additional game) for like $20 or $30. It was substantial. It was a continuation of the game. Today, they're selling you packs of stronger guns for $5 or extra bullets for $2.50 or a prettier coat for $5. Or access to the online game for $10.

They sold those guns and coats back then, too. They were included in the expansion pack, and if you bought it then you paid for those things whether you wanted them or not. You either bought everything, or nothing. If you only cared about part of it, too bad - buy it all or go without. Now you have some granularity; you can just buy the new story content, or just buy the guns, or buy it all (usually at a price that comes out to about what a boxed expansion would have anyway).

DLC isn't a "different beast" than boxed expansions at all. It's the same thing done in a different way.

As for the online passes, that's a crappy thing to do. But not only is it not an indictment of DLC, it's not even an example of it. You're not "downloading" access to their servers.

Yes, but my point is that some people are making the assumption based purely on the fact that the extra content comes through a pipe instead of on a disc, and that the very same accusations over DLC were being raised against boxed expansions in their heyday. Whether a given game publisher's business practices are ethical is orthogonal to the mechanism by which they deliver extra game content.

That's great as an option, yes. But maybe I, on the other hand, would like to pick and choose what DLC bits I want - a practice which will often save me even more money than you did by buying the Gold Edition.

Sounds better than the current malarky of putting the data on the disk and charging me an unlock code for material that should have been in the damn game to begin with. Even worse is doing this shit with one time codes to prevent reselling games.

False dichotomy, as these practices are not inherent to the concept of DLC, nor exclusive to it.

Sure, but DLC doesn't automatically mean pay-to-win.

So basically, you're okay with DLC as long as they wait until they've made about forty bucks' worth of it, and then release it all in one package that you can buy only all at once and at a store?

Back in the good old days, missing or new content was just given with new patches and there was no charge for them.

False. That stuff was either put into expansion packs or packed into a sequel. Extra content at no charge has always been the exception, not the rule. The only thing new about DLC is the delivery mechanism.

Also it's really too bad that there was nothing between the DLC Hell of the early 2010s and the Change-Muncher Hell of the 1980s...

Do you mean the Boxed Expansion Hell of the 90's and early 00's? Because that was the popular machine to rage against at the time, complete with all the same hyperbole and unfounded accusations.

Sibling AC is correct.

We expect our armed services to shut the fuck up and do what they're told.

Politicians are not soldiers, and should not behave like soldiers.

The politicians work for us, I don't think its out of the question to expect the same of the politicians - doing their job of upholding the constitution exactly the same.

You can't say you expect politicians to uphold the Constitution while simultaneously demanding it be ignored yourself.

NO company OR politician should be allowed to suggest that people's anonymity be prohibited.

You realize that's just as much a violation of the 1st Amendment as forbidding anonymity, right?