To the defense of Bethesda I want to note that they stopped the Horse-Armor bullshit DLCs like in Oblivion. I hope it was because they couldn't stand the insults from fans anymore.

And the Fallout 3 DLCs were actually worth their money. And they came out long after the game was finished and right when the demand was there.

Not like the Dragonage bull.

and i bought the damn horse armor lol

"while supplies last" is utter crap it is a way for the industry to regulate supply to artificially increase demand.

It reminds me of movie ads that say "only in theatres".

Sure... right up until it's on PPV, then DVD, then movie channels, then regular TV.

I have to admit, the 'while supplies last' on a virtual product made me do a double take.  You can run out of copies of a DLC?  Really EA?  Sigh.

You can.. some retailers already have.

What they do is they give retailers copies of the game, and a list of DLC serials. When the retailers/etailers sell the game, they ALSO give you a "free" DLC serial number you can cash in. However if they ran out of serials, tough luck.

Stardock is amazing and goes above and beyond, but in this case they are just the STORE, not the legal rights owner. I don't think there is anything THEY can do to help you in such a case.

Supply does not affect Demand! At least, not using economics definitions... marketing affects Demand, or throttling Supply affects Price.

Not necessarily true. Sometimes there is no demand for something until the supply is there, especially with technology items. Who knew I wanted a PVR until they were actually available? The fact that it existed, created a demand.  I am sure I could word that better, but its the general jist of things.

According to "common sense", that might be true. Not with economic theory though.

Of course, I could be wrong, it's been a year since I took my last class for my econ minor.

Well it's been longer than that for me, although it wasn't my minor. The supply-side theory though was Say's Law, although I am more than willing to tell you there is no one and only in terms of accepting one economic theory over another, despite what the media tries to sell, and they are constantly evolving anyway. Just when one becomes dominant some other idea shows up again or re-emerges. So I wouldn't be surprised if some economic "camps" disagree.

The basic idea is that supply controls demand in that you can't really oversupply something, in a free market, because prices will just keep dropping causing demand to pickup again and essentially meet the supply. Naturally this doesn't take into account things like ability to buy or expense of providing the supply but the idea is sound. Another problem is economic theory works great in a bubble that you can study test, but then there is the reality which is interrupted by things like regulation and random events (not taking a position on those just stating what exists) which make a perfectly free market impossible.

Anyway, I threw in my own bit about the technology items some of which I read something about before, though I can't tell you from where.

it doesn't shift the demand curve.. but it definitely changes the amount of demand....... that's the very definition of moving along the curve.

for example (didn't include supply just to simplify things as we're only talking about price / demand)... price 5, demand 10.  Well, change the price to 1, and the demand is 52 ish.  Changing price always effects demand, unless it's a perfectly inelastic demand curve.. which would mean we were talking about drinking water or some one-of-a-kind cancer treatment.. and I don't think the dlc is that