So after having to download 2 gigs of "developer interview" for Blackguards just to get the manual I'm wondering why? Avatars and wallpaper and music are all nice to offer but 98% of the time i just want the manual. I've deleted so many avatars that their screams haunt my sleep. Please help stop the slaughter.

Because today there are no manuals at all.

If you can, by the way, give a look to LaMulana manual, is very very good.

You don't need to download anything else from the extras. You can just download the manual and be done with it.

I imagine the manual is considered "Bonus" content because well, these are digital games and it seems like digital games usually do not include manuals.

FYI: You can download the manual specifically by clicking on "Manual" instead of "Combined bonus content pack"

Seeing as the first 2 hours of any recent game is tutorial is a manually still really that important?
No-one reads the manual and therefore you waste a couple of hours of your life having your hand held every time you start a game and they've stopped bothering with the manual all together
But then, maybe they always WANTED to give you the tutorial but just couldn't fit it into the 64k or whatever they had to play with, in the past?

Probably because most people won't go searching through the installation folder for manuals, so they would miss them.

Manuals were important. As a kid one of my first games bought in a shop was Earth 2140. Unfortunately, my PC wasn't able to run it. All I was left with was a manual, which I was reading in the evenings.

Your imagination is better than an actual game! :-)

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/230700/manuals/lmlnpc_manual_en.pdf?t=1393635412

LaMulana manual

D'oh! I thought I tried downloading the manuals separately. I must have been clicking on the icon instead of the link. Double d'oh. Thanks for the headsup. I also HATE to restart or usually replay games so figuring out what the stats really do is a help.

DLC The Manual.

Games can be quite large. Sometimes it's nice to be able to download just the manual.

Talking of digital. I miss the manual and box smell. :(

From what I've seen, most games include the manual (if there is one - some recent games don't have a manual) in the game installer download and it gets put in the game folder. Including it in the "bonus content" category seems to come from older box games having every document/booklet given an individual entry there, and the practice has carried forward to box-less games.

Do you know of the Falcon 4.0 manual? 800+ pages, if I remember it correctly... :)