You're free to play these free-to-play games through Steam
The Steam service just launched a slate of five free-to-play games, available from its client like any other Steam offering. Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms are now available for download through Valve's service.
So why get these F2P clients from Steam instead of just downloading the versions that were previously released through their own websites? Well, for one thing, each game will offer exclusive in-game content to Steam players this week, starting tomorrow in Spiral Knights and ending Sunday in AVA. Furthermore, these games will all support Steam's existing microtransaction backend, making the purchase of in-game content as easy as the impulse-buy of TF2 items.
Bye, money!
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FREE TO PLAY GAMES HAVE ARRIVED ON STEAM
Five F2P Launch Titles Offering Exclusive Content to Celebrate Launch
June 14, 2011 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today introduced support for Free to Play (F2P) Games on Steam with the launch of five F2P games.
Available immediately, the launch titles are Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms (AVA).
Beginning tomorrow (Weds) with Spiral Knights and concluding Sunday with AVA, each of the five launch titles will offer exclusive in-game content to those who try the "F2P game of the day" on Steam. In game transactions in all of the titles will be supported by Steam's micro-transaction backend system that is available to Steamworks partners and currently used in Valve's Team Fortress 2.
"The introduction of Free to Play games is another example of the constant evolution of Steam," said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. "Free to Play games offer new game genres and game experiences for customers, while offering developers and publishers new revenue opportunities and the ability to reach customers in areas of the world where the traditional packaged goods model is less popular than F2P."
Specific details on the F2P games of the day and their exclusive in-game content will be made available in the coming days.
Steam is a leading platform for PC & Mac games and digital entertainment serving over 1,500 games to over 30 million active accounts worldwide. For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com
