I have to say this doesn't come as a surprise. GeekGamerz has a small article discussing that Bioware once considered making people pay for the Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC.
More information.“Probably shouldn’t say this; there was discussion if it should it be charged,” Priestly revealed at a recent PAX Australia panel “And Casey Hudson (executive producer) 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 said that the BioWare team could have simply ignored feedback from players that it received from Mass Effect 3′s mysterious ending, but reassessing the situation along with the pleas from gamers around the world meant that the Extended Cut should be released as “it was the right thing to do” for everybody left confused by the endings.
“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. 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.”