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Steam To Support Free-To-Play Games
Tomorrow will mark the launch of the first free-to-play game on Steam, Valve's digital delivery platform. The service, which dominates digital retail for PC games, has supported microtransactions (Team Fortress 2's famous hats, for example) for some time but had yet to partner up with any fully free-to-play titles. Five titles to launch over the next week will change that for good.
The five games – each of which will offer exclusive content to players who try them out on the day of their Steam launch – are among the upper tier of free-to-play titles currently on the market, and range from full-on MMORPGs to session-based competitive shooters:
- Spiral Knights
- Forsaken World
- Champions Online
- Global Agenda
- Alliance of Valiant Arms
Valve will never tell, but you have to wonder how big of a cut it is taking on the microtransactions. The game publishers obviously feel like getting access to Steam's reach is worth whatever the terms of the deal are.
[via the official Steam blog]
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