EA wants to renew its position in the States as the Worst Company for third consecutive year. Let us recapitulate: the company has launched an unfinished game with Battlefield 4, investors have sued EA, and now, it seems that you are going to pay for a free DLC. At least it was free when EA and DICE announced it.
China Rising was the first announced DLC for Battlefield 4. This extra was offered free to all those that had reserved Battlefield 4 on any platform of the game. This DLC is free to PS3 & Xbox 360 users, but if you upgrade your past-gen version of B4 to PS4 or Xbox One, this DLC is not available as free. Supposedly, this upgrade should have let the player to play this DLC on PS4 or X1 too without to pay for it if you had got it previously.
EA claims that China Rising should be upgraded alongside the rest of the game, but some users have reported that they can’t access to that content. Moreover, buckethead232 obtained this answer from an EA representative through a text chat service:
“According to the latest updates, upgraded players have to purchase [China Rising],”
Therefore, if you want to play China Rising you would have to pre-order a next-gen version of B4, spend 15$ to buy this cool-slice-of-cake or spend 50$ on Battlefield 4 premium service (this includes China Rising and the rest of DLC’s for B4). Don’t complain, there are options, although in all ones you are going to open your wallet again, at least until EA will fix this new setback.
Update: We have received this answer on Twitter (Thanks,XXMACGUYVERXX, when my sink will leak, I’ll call you).
Thanks, Joystiq.