I think someone from stardock started this thread to make me want to spend more money.

Sneaky little bastards.

 I also bought E:WOM as a pre-sale, for both me and my wife. When we got the game, I actually thought it was okay, But not good enough for me to continue playing past 1.2. Did I hate Stardock for the game? No. Why? Because it isn't the first time, nor will it be the last time I purchase a game, and not walk away feeling this is perfect, or even a good game. Happens all the time with movies, do I expect my money back or expect that a film company will give me a free ticket to another show later, no.

 But when I received an email from Mr. Wardell saying that because the game didn't live up to anyone's expectations and I would get their next game based on the world, Fallen Enchantress for free. I was blown away. I had never heard of that, and so I gave it a shot, and liked it. It is still on my computer, and I still fire it up to play it. Then I get an email, saying to go to Stardock, and look at my downloads, because I have access to a free beta of Legendary Heroes. And I began playing that at v .75. Been playing it a lot since then.

  As for the DLC, no one is saying you have to buy it, and a lot of the changes are free in a patch. I love turn based strategy games, and love having another game and company to support. Take Civ. V from Firaxis. I own it, and I own all of the DLC, and expansions for it, it is a great game, and has been out for several years. Do I regret buying any of the DLC? No, Do I think some of it, or all of it should be free? No. I for one, do not see DLC for games as an issue. I like this type of game, I will support this type of game, and I will continue to give my money to those developers that produce the kind of game I love, because if I don't, those games will disappear.  To be honest, if they had given me access to LH beta, and then asked me to pay the cost they are selling LH as an upgrade to owners of FE, I would have paid it, and been happy to do it. I actually game to the forums today, to see if there was anymore DLC coming, or any more plans for the game, saw this post and responded to it.

Stardock hasn't asked me for an additional $10.
I thought DLC was an invitation to purchase additional content at additional cost - not a demand to do so. If you don't like the invitation then decline the opportunity. The devs (whether they be Stardock or anyone else) will realise via sales figures if their invitation was universally appealing or only marginally appealing.

This has been an interesting discussion. However, I personally think the original comparison to the Witcher series is quite unfair to SD, specifically because the argument about paid DLC vs. free content is too slanted towards the customer perspective (everyone likes free stuff!) and too insensitive to the company's fiscal realities (bills and salaries still need to be paid!).  

The Witcher series has been a big surprise hit. CDProject has used the revenues for the series rather high sales to support ongoing development and cool freebies for their customers. Great stuff, lots to like about that approach, and they are fortunate to be in a position to do that for their fans. I'm a big fan of their works and have no complaints about their approach.

SD, on the other hand, had a rather massive failure on their hand with E:WOM. They took a big loss on the project. They had to sell their (presumably lucrative) online store Impulse to keep their game development division going. They then compounded the loss by deciding to 1) continue developing (i.e. spend lots of money on; employee salaries are expensive) new iterations of E:WOM which led us here to the FE and LH games, and 2) giving free copies of those new games away to disgruntled E:WOM customers, potentially further cutting into the potential revenues from these new games, but also earning them a lot of goodwill and respect from their customers and maybe some word of mouth sales.

The point of all this is to say that in my opinion the company that bent over backwards to try to do right by their customers even though they were taking big losses is more praiseworthy than the company that provided lots of cool stuff for their customers for free while enjoying strong profits. I really agree with the others who have already said that what SD did in response to the E:WOM situation was probably unprecedented in the industry.

For them to want to recoup some of those losses with a couple DLC seems pretty fair to me, especially since they gave out so many copies of the game for free. And as far as DLC pricing goes, it seems pretty reasonably to me in this case. For comparison, go visit the industry gold-standard on DLC-customer-price-gouging at the EA store, where $10-$20 DLC for a few skins and a short mission adding an hour or two of new content are pretty common. 

That in and of itself is taking a stance on DLC.  The beauty of DLC, as far as I'm concerned, is it lets me decide if I want to give money in exchange for new content.  I'm picky with it, so I only buy what I think is good value DLC.  

None of that new content would have been in your $70 standard (which we're slowly creeping towards anyway) because companies didn't develop substantial additional content that they gave out for free after a games launch.  If they developed anything at all it was saved for an expansion pack which you paid for.  

Saying that Stardock of all companies isn't providing value is one of the dumber things a person could ever say.  They take care of their customers better than anybody, and continue adding free stuff to games after release better than most, and patch to improve games, not just to make them playable, often by adding entirely new features and at the least lots of tweaks to the game to make it better.

My mind is blown.  It's a sad day when somebody would dare to criticize one of the best gaming companies in all of time in regards to taking care of customers and games.

This game was never lacking for maps or quest variety.  The DLC is optional and isn't that expensive.  You absolutely don't need the DLC to enjoy hundreds of hours of infinite replayability.  For me, as someone who prepurchased the original FE game, I got LH for free for being a loyal customer.  I buy the DLC both to have more game and to throw some money SD's way for treating me like gold.

How many companies release a game that doesn't meet expectations, redo the game to make it better such that it's basically a new game, AND give that game away for free to people who bought the first one?  It's probably been done but I can't recall hearing about it.  They could've just said, sometimes you swing and miss and just left it at that, made a FE2 promising to be better (a more typical way of doing things), and charged everybody full price for it.

CD Projekt RED is not your typical company any more than Stardock is a typical company.  They also take care of their customers moreso than many other companies.  How about comparing more typical devs from the rest of the gaming industry to either of these two instead?

BTW, Witcher 2 enhanced edition is on sale on steam this weekend for $5.  I already own it and just can't get into it.  Too arcade-ish for my tastes.  I keep trying though and get a little further each time.  Last time I finished the tutorial. 

Holy crap.  A reasonable discussion about DLC in a consistently mature "here's the reality of business" tone.  I can't remeber the last time I have ever read a thread like this.  I have never seen a community more willing to accept DLC as a good thing. 

This really says something about SD as a company.  The level of trust they engender in their fanbase is inspiring.