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Team Fortress 2 helped Valve survive without an MMO
Gamasutra is running an interesting interview with Team Fortress 2 lead designer Robin Walker. While the whimsical shooter offers plenty of engaging gameplay, it's most notable accomplishment may be that it serves as a testbed for Valve's future livelihood. "[When TF2 shipped], MMOs were the dominant story in the industry, and one concern we had was that we might not be able to survive if we didn't build one," Walker told the website. "We didn't think we were ready to undertake that, but we did think that we might be able to build some pieces of one, learning enough so that if or when we did need to build one, we had less risk on the table. We decided that persistent item design and storage seemed like a reasonable amount of risk for us to bite off, and could be made to fit into TF2's gameplay," Walker explained.
Valve relaunching Team Fortress 2 as free-to-play title
Develop has posted an interview with Team Fortress 2 developer Robin Walker in which he says that the company has decided to make the popular class-based shooter completely free-to-play, supported only by microtransactions. Walker says the game has experimented with multiple price points over its long history (including allowing players to play for free during temporary periods) and that making this transition now "feels like a fairly straightforward next step along the 'Games as Services' path we've been walking down for a while now." Walker also says that this is a model that specifically fits the multiplayer game at this moment in the product's life, when Valve is trying to reach as many players as it possibly can. The permanent price drop won't affect development on the game at all, but monetization will only go through the game's item shop. You can read more in the interview, live now over at Develop. There's no official word on any of this from Valve yet, on either the Steam blog or the official Team Fortress 2 site. We are scheduled to hear about the next update today (and even see a "Meet the Medic" video) and the game was set to go free for just a week, but this is obviously a more permanent direction. We've contacted Valve and will post more here when we get it. Update: Valve's Doug Lombardi has responded to us with a simple confirmation: "Yep." Enjoy your free TF2, kids! Update: The site has been updated as well. The game's completely free to play, forever!
Team Fortress 2 update lets players buy items, prices range from $0.49 to $4.99
You may want to sit down for this one, innocent, doe-eyed gamer. Valve – the gaming company that no matter how rich they may or may not be always has your best interests in mind – has just released an update to the oft-updated Team Fortress 2 that is going to radically alter your worldview. You see, in-game items are no longer things you earn through sheer digi-work and e-sweat; the so-called "Mann-conomy Update" will allow players to use actual Earth bucks to purchase items. How many items? Valve's Robin Walker tells PC Gamer, "It's roughly the equivalent of 60% of the items we have released in the 120+ prior updates." So, a lot. Item cost will range from $0.49 to $4.99 and "community item contributors will get paid based on the sales of their items." Instead of using an in-game wallet, Team Fortress 2's Mann Co. Store will use the Steam Wallet service which is available for in-game purchases in any Steam game. In addition to making items available for sale, the update also adds item trading, item customization, a dueling minigame, mystery item crates, and item sets. It's a lot of stuff, is what we're saying. Read the source links below for all the gory (or exciting, depending on your perspective) details.
