Word came last week that Electronic Art’s Battlefield: Bad Company Beta would be dropping Tuesday, March 25th. All gamers rejoiced - free Betas are cool. Everybody loves to play games before they’re released, especially when they don’t cost us a penny. Along with that they give the publisher & developer exposure to tons of gamers over XBL, as well as the opportunity to maybe work out a bug or two before the game’s released (unless your name’s Infinity Ward - no big deal - moving on). Things sound peachy, right? Everyone wins. Free play for you, free exposure / bug identification for them.

Then last week screen shots from the Beta were leaked showing downloadable weapons available for purchase through Xbox Live Marketplace. There was an uproar from the community, everyone was pissed including me. IGN got in contact with an EA spokesperson and confirmed that five free weapons will be released through five promotional events during the month of beta testing - they’ll even be available for download when the game drops incase you missed the beta download period. Cool. Free weapons. But then come release time, EA’s gonna put out a special “Gold Edition” of the game (obviously costing more) which contains another five additional unique weapons (which supposedly give no ’significant’ advantage to players). Gamers who failed to purchase this more expensive version will have the opportunity to buy each individual weapon at a “small” cost via the Marketplace post release. Freaking shaaaaady. Charging for maps? OK…fine, maybe I’ll let that fly… but charging for weapons?? Things that are gonna affect gameplay from one gamer to another? And they’re not unlockable through the game - only through hard earned dollaz? …lame. sauce.

The industry seems pretty segregated on their feelings concerning micro transactions. You’ve got the whole Bethesda Horse Armor ridiculousness, and then on the other end of the spectrum you’ve got Rockband’s weekly downloadable tracks. Is it safe to say that some microtransactions are good, while others borderline on “If i see the dev who came up with this idea on the street, I’ll punch him in the neck?” Do you ever feel like developers purposely leave content out of the initial release of the game just so a few months down the road they can make bank off you again? I support Harmonix and all the work they’ve done to give us new tracks each week, but come on now, EA. That ain’t right.