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Valve: Team Fortress 2 To Be Free-To-Play
In a surprising move, Valve has revealed that its popular online shooter Team Fortress 2 switching to a free-to-play, microtransaction-driven business model. The news came in an interview by Develop with Valve's Robin Walker.
We've been toying with the idea ever since the Mann-conomy update, where we added the in-game Team Fortress 2 store. Over the years we've done a bunch of price experimentations with the game, going all the way down to $2.49 in our random one-hour Halloween sales," said Walker. "The more we've experimented, the more we've learned there are fundamentally different kinds of customers, each with their own way of valuing the product. Now that we're shipping it, it feels like a fairly straightforward next step along the 'Games as Services' path we've been walking down for a while now."
From here on out, the game will be free to download, and Valve will attempt to make money solely on sales of items sold in the game's store.
This is big news.
While free-to-play has been an increasingly popular business model in recent years, this is perhaps one of the most popular and most critically acclaimed game to adopt the structure to date.
For more read the full interview at Develop.
Download Team Fortress 2 here.
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