Valve Software has confirmed that users will not be charged for downloading additional content from the company; despite the abundance in premium content downloads as seen in most PC titles and on Xbox Live.

During an interview with consumer website Eurogamer.net, Team Fortress 2 developer Robin Walker commented, "You buy the product, you get the content.”

"We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers."

Echoing Walker’s comments, Charlie Brown of Valve Software added, "[In multiplayer games] the content you're playing is being created by the players you're playing against, so the more people that get into the game, the more content you're going to have.”

Microtransactions have become a popular means of allowing users to download extra content from existing titles, a method, which has been widly popularised by Microsoft’s Xbox Live service.

A recent example of this can be seen in Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which recently celebrated the release of the expansion pack, The Shivering Isles. Further content, such as The Knights of the Nine, is also available for consumers to download on Xbox Live, or purchased separately for PC.

However, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi revealed that the company has had "pretty strong opinions" when it comes to distributing new content, stating, "Our philosophy there is, if you buy the product, we put more content out to keep the game interesting, we sell more products."

"Counter-Strike is number one and has been since '99 because we kept the game interesting, not because we tried to charge people more, and that's come back in sales of Counter-Strike”, he concluded.