I don't get what the big problem is I guess. I judge a games value on 1) the quality of the game experience. 2) the game's re playability and 3) The number of hours of enjoyment I get out of the game.

As far as L4D goes, they got high marks on all accounts. I put in well over 40 hours in the first week of playing the game. That's more playtime than I've gotten out of any game recently. From the looks of L4D2, the updates are so above and beyond there's no realistic way it could possibly be a paid expansion to the original. Managing who has the expansion and who doesn't and making the expansion backwards compatible with non-expansion games would be a bigger headache than it was worth. As for a free upgrade? Please, there was FAR too much work put into this to expect that. If you ask me the boycotters have been spoiled by Valve for so long that they expect everything to be an upgrade for years. They need to grow up and get real. Valve will continue to treat it's customers well, I have no doubt, but a massive update such as this is clearly something that should generate some revenue.