Jerykk wrote on Oct 11, 2012, 17:30:
DLC isn't always withheld content. In some cases, it is (like with ME3's From Ashes DLC) but in many cases, the DLC has a completely separate budget and dev cycle from the main game. Once a game reaches beta, the artists and designers aren't really generating any new content for the main game. They're just fixing bugs and doing general polish tasks. As such, it makes sense for them to start working on DLC during this period. That's how they can release DLC so soon after the main game's release.
You're making a distinction that I don't count. Yes, it's not always stuff they physically removed ala ME3's Ashes. But it's still often stuff that was planned out well before the game was shipped, let alone finalized. Even the Mechromancer DLC was planned before the game hit gold. They might not have started working on it, but they'd already effectively separated it from the game ahead of time. That's what I'm talking about by "withheld".