I'm just gonna crosspost what I posted elsewhere:
That depends on the game, really. For a multiplayer game it makes sense for DLC like map packs to be free, because it avoids splitting the playerbase.
Playerbase splitting doesn?t immediately sound terrible, but in matchmade games what you actually get is people who have paid for the DLC but can?t use it because they keep getting matchmade with people who don?t have it, and DLC exclusive playlists that are too small to have a wide skill range. So rather than making the experience better, the DLC actually makes it worse, and the early complaints from people who have bought it and can?t use it make the rest of the community not want to buy it, it?s self-defeating.
A better way to monetise DLC like that is to also add things like new weapons, cosmetics, and upgrades to your progression system, and have a microtransaction model that allows people to skip ahead in the progression by giving you money (see: every Free To Play game ever, but particularly games like Blacklight: Retribution or Tribes Ascend).
Done that way, the playerbase stays together, which makes your online community more stable and attractive, because one of the draws of an online game is a large community. A large community means its easy to get into games and means that you are more likely to encounter players near your own skill by simple law of averages. A small but really dedicated community is actually unattractive to an outsider because everyone they meet will be loads better at the game than them, making it hard to actually get started and driving people away. And because you?re offering that stable community ways to keep giving you money, some of them will do. Especially the later adopters, because they?ll probably have gotten the base game cheaper and be thinking ?well, I paid half price for the base game, I can spare a few extra quid to get a leg up in the multi).
For a straight up singleplayer game like Witcher 2, then feel free to charge money for the DLC, as long as you make sure it?s
A) A substantial offering, looking back at the Horse Armour debacle in Oblivion, there?s really not much to complain about pricewise, because as useless and cosmetic as horse armour was, it was a trivial price (80msp, that?s about 50p, you can barely get a chocolate bar for that). But it turned out that what people wanted was stuff that made a substantial contribution to their experience, so stuff like Knights of the Nine was much better, even though it cost more. (In fact, this is conditional: It?s ok to sell horse armour as long as you have the meaty stuff AS WELL, Oblivion copped flak because the first few DLCs were all horse armour, if they?d started with a chunky one like Knights of the Nine AS WELL as a couple of fluffy ones no-one would have cared)
and B) it feels EXTRA. Bioware fell over with From Ashes not because it was day 1 DLC per se, but because the subject of the DLC was something that should have had a massive impact on the lore of Mass Effect, a live Prothean? A completely different perspective on the entire history and lore that throws everything we?d assumed out of whack? How is that NOT important enough to have in the main game. Back in Mass Effect 2 they got it right with pretty much all the big DLCs, Zaeed (who was day 1, remember), Overlord, Kasumi, they all feel like extra side stories, none of them feel like the game is incomplete without them, but they?re nice additions if you have them. (They really need to stop doing the whole ?reuse stuff we didn?t have time for as DLC thing. Dragon Age could have been a much stronger story if the things that were supposed to come out of Return to Ostagar were in the game and the whole Brecilian forest nonsense wasn?t, because it was all stuff that tied in to Loghain, basically the game?s closest thing to a real villain not just an ?orrible monster to be chopped up).
If CD Projekt want to give me stuff, they can do, but if they made it worth paying for I?d pay for it.
