Chris Priestly, lead community manager for BioWare, revealed at a PAX Australia panel that BioWare originally considered charging for the Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC.
"Probably shouldn't say this; there was discussion [about] should it be charged," Priestly said at the panel. "And [executive producer Casey Hudson] said 'No, we can't do that. We have to make this better. We can do a better job finishing the game, providing clarity, answering some questions.' And it was very important to the team to end it as best as possible."
Priestly also said that BioWare could have ignored the angry feedback regarding the original ending, but the company decided to re-assess the endings and ultimately release an ending with better explanation because "it was the right thing to do."
"It would have been really easy for them to have hidden. To have put their heads down and said, "nope, we're done. That's it. DLC coming next month,'" Priestly continued. "They didn't. And it's hard; it's really hard when you've put stuff in as a dev team for years making this game to have people say how bad it is. But they didn't. They listened and they made the Extended Cut because it was the right thing to do and release it for free to the fans because again, it was the right thing to do."
[Source]
