Valve wants Free Downloadable Content (DLC)? How?

May 22, Eurogamerhad put a quote that I remember quite well, coming from Team Fortress 2designer Robin Walker on the issue of paying for new maps in the game:”Youbuy the product, you get the content. We make more money because morepeople buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the samecustomers.”
This was well before the game was released and was a forgotten quoteup until today, where the issue of paying for additional contentdoesn’t come up often, as it seems people are just okay with it now indays. Well, people who aren’t PC gamers. Even I was against it atfirst, having waited for all the Halo 2 maps to be free before I wasable to jump back into matchmaking, I was very stubborn. Now I havequickly bought up 4 Rock Band tracks in the past few weeks (and I stillhaven’t even beat the game and unlocked all the songs that I have onthe disc). This doesn’t mean that I don’t see the value of free contentfrom a consumer point of view, it makes me really want to do businessagain with whomever would offer such things to me, easily.
This brings us back to Team Fortress 2 and Valve. With a new mappack finally coming soon, the talk of price has come up, and so thatEurogamer quote is now relavant. Kotaku contacted Valve,where the VP of marketing, Doug Lombardi, has not only kept the samemindset of having the content free, but left with this very boldstatement, “The platform holder owns the final call.”
I think one can only say.. BAM! Eat that Microsoft and Sony! Withthis news coming on the weekend, I would expect no official response onthe matter until Monday (if at all), but still it ensures that all usgamers, whether we are fans of Valve or not, are able to see who reallyis making us all pay for horse armor. I think we can all recall Epicstating that Gears of War DLC would be free, but when it showed up, itseems Microsoft tacked on a cost to get it. Now I am going to bet thisis going to fall on what will Sony do first, then Microsoft willfollow, as if it was up to Microsoft, you know we would be downloadingthis only after saving our lunch money for a few days.