Online games are notorious for having an abundance of DLC. It's becoming increasingly common for publishers to offer DLC "season passes" at launch, granting continuous access to a game's add-on goods. But Starhawk will not follow the rest of the industry. Instead, LightBox Interactive has promised that all future map packs for the game will be free. Curious, no?

Dylan Jobe explained to the PlayStation.Blog about lessons learned from Warhawk, his studio's previous game. "We really didn't like how in Warhawk when we released a new map pack, it forced these divisions on our players. And after we released three expansions, our player community was pretty fractured."

Because Jobe would rather have a cohesive online community, he promises that all map packs for Starhawk will be free. Already, the team is working on "Map Pack #1."

Although maps will be given away for every member of the community, the team will have to look to other means of monetizing the game. "We'll have some paid DLC content in the future... but we're still playing around with what that will be," Jobe explained. "We're going to be looking to see what the player feedback is on Starhawk in the coming weeks to help steer the DLC."

For more on Starhawk, don't forget to read our field report.