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Team Fortress 2 Now Free On Steam

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Apr 12, 2001
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Team Fortress 2, Valve's class-based cartoonish first-person shooter, which was one of the first Steam-powered games to arrive on the Mac, is now totally free. Valve will generate revenue from TF2 by selling the many items available through random drops in the game via microtransactions in a TF2 store.

Players can purchase new weapons and upgrades through the Steam Wallet, Steam's microtransaction service. For players who don't want to spend any money (and don't mind waiting), TF2 will keep its random drop system, which will eventually hand out all the upgrades the game has to offer.

Many of the new items that the company adds to the game are created by community members, and Valve splits revenue from community-designed items with the creator, much like Apple's App Store.

Team Fortress 2 manager Robin Walker said in an interview with Develop that for multiplayer games in particular, the more folks playing the game, the better.
The more players, the more available servers in your area, the wider variety of other players you'll find, the greater the opportunity for new experiences, and so on.

Another way we think of it is that there are a class of players who will never pay us a dime, for a variety of reasons. We're not upset by that, it's just a constraint we need to design around. The interesting problem to solve is how to make those freeloaders produce value for our paying customers. Obviously, getting those free players into the game is the first step to doing that.
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Team Fortress 2 is a free download through Steam.

Article Link: Team Fortress 2 Now Free On Steam
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/24/team-fortress-2-now-free-on-steam/
^ Yup! Looks great on my 27" all maxed out! Especially once you enable the semi-secret Ultra High settings ;).

Brilliant game. One of the best ever IMO. Been playing since the beta for preorder owners back in 2007 and a week hasn't gone by where I haven't played it.

OliverOSX93 said:
I enjoyed the game more before the mancomnamy update. its on its way out really :/
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So that's why the weekly average number of players has been steadily rising in the last 12 months and why it has never dropped below 5th place on the Most Played list on the stats page.
 
TF2 is great and I’m not sorry I paid for it! (Plus, I got Portal for free :) )

I hope this happens with Quake Wars too. I see TF2 as kind of halfway between Quake Wars and UT (not in style, but in tactics). UT/Onslaught is mainly action with little room for deep creativity, while QW has even more room for creative tactics/responses than TF2 (which is saying something). All 3 are favorites of mine though!
 
Dagless said:
^ Yup! Looks great on my 27" all maxed out! Especially once you enable the semi-secret Ultra High settings ;).

Brilliant game. One of the best ever IMO. Been playing since the beta for preorder owners back in 2007 and a week hasn't gone by where I haven't played it.



So that's why the weekly average number of players has been steadily rising in the last 12 months and why it has never dropped below 5th place on the Most Played list on the stats page.
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all good things must come to an end.I can't really see TF2 having much more life left in it, even with an uber charge ;)

/edit/ don't get me wrong. I think it will last another year or two but I think we will start to see its decline in the not so distant future
 
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OliverOSX93 said:
all good things must come to an end.I can't really see TF2 having much more life left in it, even with an uber charge ;)

/edit/ don't get me wrong. I think it will last another year or two but I think we will start to see its decline in the not so distant future
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Given that the 2 most played games on Steam are almost always Counterstrike, even before CS Source got an update, no. I can't see TF2 waning until Steam is dead or TF3 is out. Even then just look at the thriving CS community even though CS Source exists.
 
I like how they are separating paid and free.. If you have ever paid for TF2 (either bought ht game previously, or paid for items)
You are a "Premium" player compared to a free player. I don't know what the advantages of being premium is, but at least they are acknowledging paid customers still.
:cool:
 
VPrime said:
I like how they are separating paid and free.. If you have ever paid for TF2 (either bought ht game previously, or paid for items)
You are a "Premium" player compared to a free player. I don't know what the advantages of being premium is, but at least they are acknowledging paid customers still.
:cool:
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...they are not separating paying from free player.
 
I've been meaning to try this game for ages - guess now I have no excuse not to.

Gotta love Steam - I almost always use it if it's an option for buying the games I want as opposed to physical media or other online stores.
 
They can give it away for free because people have to pay for keys to all those stupid "free" crates they give out.
 
So I finished up one of my recent projects and now I've been introduced to "weekends", so I'm spending a few hours playing TF2 a day. I'm actually really glad its now free to play! Servers are bustling as its now the most played game on Steam (85k players connected all at once!). People are now playing on TC_Hydro - a map which everyone gave up on a year after the games launch and one of my all time faves.

I hope this never ends :). Spread the word! Get more people in!
 
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