EA scraps Bad Company weapon fee

EA has decided to make the extra guns in Battlefield: Bad Company available to everybody for free.

These were previously only available as DLC, or to those buying the Gold Edition of the game.

But, due to the arrival of a pitchfork-wielding mob, the publisher rethought its plan and is allowing you to attain the extra weaponry when you get to rank 25 - otherwise known as The Top.

Those forking out extra for the Gold Edition will still be able to use the weapons out of the box.

"DICE is built upon the multiplayer community, and we do listen to what people say out there," Karl-Magnus Troedsson, senior producer at developer DICE, told GameSpot. "When we saw this big uprise... We just decided that all weapons will be free in the game, and that's how it is now."

Battlefield: Bad Company is due out on PS3 and 360 this summer, after having been pushed back from an early 2008 release to be given some extra army boot-polish.

Little is known about the game, other than it is a story-based affair with plenty of dark humour, offering a look at how soldiers act behind enemy lines - a bit like that Three Kings film.

"I would give Battlefield: Bad Company a chance, because it's a really awesome game, and the use of destruction is really revolutionary; I've done things in that game which I've never done before," DICE producer Ben Cousins told Gamasutra, recently. "It's a real tangential shift for shooters to suddenly not have cover and to be able to shoot your way through cover.

"The other way [it's] really innovating is the story. We talked about the incredibly serious war setting, [but] this is a bunch of dudes cracking jokes; these movies you see on YouTube have got guys on tours of duty in Iraq, there, dealing with this with humor, and that's a fascinating thing."

Go like the clappers over to our Battlefield: Bad Company gamepage for handfuls of videos offering a glimpse at what it's all about.