Before I start ranting too much, let me get something out of the way: I adore Steam. Sure, it's a big virtual hole in my wallet, but I love the fact that in this day and age you can order video games right over the internet and they will download right onto your computer and you will never have to worry about losing the CDs.
That said, there are these occasional boxes that pop up on the side of my computer: "Steam has finished downloading Team Fortress 2" is probably the most repetitive one. This is because Team Fortress 2 gets updated approximately twice a month. They're always giving you new weapons, or tweaking your new weapons so they're not Haxxor-uberbuffed, or giving you new hats. Every once in a while, there's a new map, which is nice.
The fascinating thing about TF2 is that so far, you haven't had to pay for any of this (unless you really want to, but items drop often enough that you don't have to). It's DLC in the sense that it downloads, but you have no control over it and it doesn't cost you a dime. (It'd be nice if they fixed the backstab mechanic so that a Spy in front of me can't kill me while I'm ducking, but that's really just a minor complaint.)
I'm not really here to complain about TF2. Nor do I have any intention of complaining about, say, the DLC for Mass Effect 2. The game is complete without Zaeed or Kasumi or the Shadow Broker or half a dozen extra guns. Those are what we call "extras." If you want to shell out money to give Miranda more clothes, that's your problem. (The fact that the final DLC, "Arrival," is essentially an "interquel" for ME3 is a little bit annoying, but I'll let it pass. I'll especially let it pass if it comes bundled with ME3, but I kinda doub it will - besides, that'd piss off the people who already bought it.)
But these patches, updates and DLC are both the symptoms and the cause of the problem; now that it's possible to update a video game after it's been released, quality control is going away, fast. While I'm very happy that Skyrm is finally out and I will no longer be subjected to the poor-man's-Howard-Shore* they seem to employ for the music in all their commercials, the fact of the matter is that everything I've read about it seems to imply that a patch is already on the way.
Okay, so you blew the whole quality control thing. At least you can still give the fans what they want, right? I mean, it's not like there's a game out there where appeasing one section of the fanbase in your latest patch will completely alienate another section...
And this brings us back to StarCraft II, which was the first game where I encountered this problem. My units do less damage this week than they did last week because enough people who play as a different race complained. My powers work differently now because they decided that they actually liked the way things worked before the patch that immediately preceeded my purchase of the game. They're not going to suddenly change the Soldier's health in TF2, nor are they going to change his running speed (and frankly, as long as the latter remains "slower than the Spy," I don't care one way or the other).** They're not going to suddenly decide that Miranda was overbuffed in ME2 and take away one of her powers.
The other thing is that I was reading some of the old patch notes for SC2, and it seems like the game was crashing a lot for no good reason back after it first came out. Again, did you not bother to beta-test it?
Then there's the dark side to DLC, which is what you get when you pay $10 for the first part of a video game, and $5 for each sucessive part. Believe me, it's coming. It's coming for the exact same reason that everything costs $X.99 instead of $(X+1). You think you're saving money.
And one day, the worst will come to pass: a permanent beta that you have to pay money to fix. And the day I'm tricked into buying that will be the day I swear off video games forever.
*I have nothing against Howard Shore. I just thought the music in the Skyrm commercials was crap.
**Yes, they do change various unlockable weapons from time to time, like giving the Backburner a compression blast. Doesn't really affect gameplay.
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